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HISTORY OF 
MANKIND 

BY 

HUTTON WEBSTER, Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 
AUTHOR OF “ ANCIENT HISTORY,” “ MEDIEVAL AND 
MODERN HISTORY,” “ EARLY EUROPEAN 
HISTORY,” “MODERN EUROPEAN HISTORY,” 
“WORLD HISTORY,” “HISTORY OF THE 
MODERN WORLD,” ETC. 


“ Know that the science of History is noble in its concep¬ 
tion, abounding in instruction, and exalted in its aim.” 

— I bn Khaldun. 

» ) 

> 1 •> K 


D. C. HEATH AND COMPANY 

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO ATLANTA 
DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO LONDON 







31 

.NM'Sfc 


Copyright, 1928, 

By D. C. Heath and Company 

2 e 8 


PRINTED IN D.S.A. 

©C1A1082409 

JUL -9 1926 


‘'Vn . t b 


PREFACE 

This textbook was begun as a simple revision of my World 
History , first published in 1921. What I said in the preface to 
th^t work may be repeated here: “ It covers the entire historic 
field, together with a chapter on prehistoric times; it presents 
a survey of human progress rather than a chronological outline 
of events; it is intended for that large body of students who, for 
various reasons, do not take more than one year of history in 
the high school. They ought to gain from such a course, how¬ 
ever brief, some conception of social development and some 
realization of man’s upward march from the Stone Age to 
the present time. Nothing but general or universal history 
will give them that conception — that realization. And only 
a history of the world will enable them to appreciate the con¬ 
tributions' made by peoples widely separated in space and time 
to what is steadily becoming the common civilization of 
mankind.” 

The present textbook thus resembles its predecessor in view¬ 
point and purpose, but it has grown into substantially a new 
work, for which a new title seems to be appropriate. While 
some of the chapters have been taken from the World History 
with little essential change, a number that did not find a place 
there have been added, and the others have been entirely made 
over, either to secure greater simplicity of statement or, by 
further compression of the political narrative, to gain more 
space for the treatment of purely cultural themes. The book 
is, in its present form, a short history of civilization. 

The History of Mankind includes about one hundred maps, 
all of them in close relation to the text which they are intended 
to amplify and explain. Careful examination of these maps and 
the reproduction of some of them in outline form by students 
is recommended. The illustrations and plates, which are usually 

iii 


IV 


Preface 


accompanied by descriptive labels, likewise form an integral 
part of the text for purposes of study. Attention is also called 
to the charts and graphs distributed throughout the book. 
These are not intended for memorization but as summaries 
convenient for reference. The division of the text into numbered 
sections, with black-letter titles for each paragraph, should 
facilitate the preparation of outlines covering a single chapter 
or several chapters. 

Teachers will find in the book, as in its predecessor, a variety 
of aids. The “ Suggestions for Further Study ” provide extended 
bibliographies. The numerous “Studies” at the end of each 
chapter may be used either in the daily recitation or for review 
after the entire chapter has been read. They are intended to do 
something more than merely test the memory; they ought to 
make possible, as well, Socratic methods of teaching in the 
classroom. The “Table of Events and Dates,” forming the 
appendix, should be consulted frequently, and pupils should be 
required to elaborate the brief explanations there given con¬ 
cerning the significance of each dated event. Care ought also 
to be taken that pupils acquire a correct pronunciation of all 
proper names mentioned in the text and incorporated in the 
index and pronouncing vocabulary. 

The selection of collateral reading, always a difficult problem 
in the high school, is doubly difficult when so much ground must 
be covered in a single course. I venture, therefore, to call 
attention to my Readings in Early European History and Read¬ 
ings in Modern European History. These consist of extracts 
from the sources, chiefly of a biographical or narrative character. 
Their purpose is to provide immature students with a variety of 
extended, unified, and interesting material on matters which a 
textbook treats with necessary, though none the less deplorable, 
condensation. References to both collections are inserted in 
footnotes. 

Hutton Webster 

Lincoln, Nebraska, 

March , 1928. 


CONTENTS 


List of Illustrations . 



PAGE 

xi 

List of Maps and Charts .... 



XV 

List of Plates. 




Suggestions for Further Study . 

• 

• 

xxi 

CHAPTER 

I. Prehistory 

1. Civilization .... 



1 

2 . Antiquity of Man 



2 

3. The Old Stone Age . 



6 

4. The New Stone Age . 



. 11 

5. The Age of Metals . 



. 14 

6 . Dawn of Civilization 



. 15 

II. The World’s Peoples 

7. Races of Man .... 



. 19 

8 . Human Migrations . 



. 22 

9. Languages of Man . 



. 25 

10 . Writing and the Alphabet 



. 26 

11 . Counting and the Calendar 



. 30 

12 . Man and Culture 



. 34 

III. The Far East in Antiquity 

13. Lands and Peoples of the East. 



. 37 ^ 

14. China. 



. 39 

15. Chinese Society 



. 43 

16. Chinese Culture 



. 46 

17. India. 



. 51 

18. Indian Society and Culture 



. 53 

19. The Aryans in India 



. 58 

IV. The Near East in Antiquity 

20 . Egypt . . 



. 61>^ 

21 . Babylonia .... 



. 64 

22. Government .... 



. 66 

23. Social Classes. 



. 69 

24. Occupations .... 



. 70 


V 

























VI 


Contents 


CHAPTER PAGE 



25. 

Commerce and Trade Routes . 

. 

. 

. 72 


26. 

Law and Morality .... 



. 75 


27. 

Religion. 



. 78 


28. 

Literature. 



. 82 


29. 

The Fine Arts. 



. 83 


30. 

Science. 



. 85 


31. 

The Near East and Europe 



. 88 

V. 

Greece 





32. 

Lands and Peoples of the West 



. 90 


33. 

The Mediterranean Basin 



. 93 


34. 

Forerunners of the Greeks 



. 95 


35. 

The Greeks. 



. 98 


36. 

Greek Religion. 



. 101 


37. 

The Greek City-States 



. 103 


38. 

Colonial Expansion of Greece . 



. 106 


39. 

Greece and Persia .... 



. 108 


40. 

Athens Mistress of the ^Egean 



. 114 


41. 

Decline of the Greek City-States 



. 118 


42. 

Alexander the Great and the Conquest of Persia 

. 121 


43. 

The Graeco-Oriental Age . 

• 

• 

. 124 

VI. 

Rome 






44. 

Italy and Sicily .... 



. 130 


45. 

Italian Peoples. 



. 131 


46. 

The Romans. 



. 133 


47. 

Roman Religion .... 



. 136 


48. 

The Roman City-State 



. 138 


49. 

Expansion of Rome over Italy . 



. 140 


50. 

Rome and Carthage .... 



. 143 


51. 

Rome Mistress of the Mediterranean 



. 147 


52. 

Decline of the Roman City-State 



. 150 


53. 

The Roman Empire .... 



. 156 


54. 

The Graeco-Oriental-Roman World . 



. 162 

VII. 

Classical Civilization 





55. 

The Ancient City .... 



. 167 


56. 

Private Life of the Greeks and Romans 



. 168 


57. 

Social Life of the Greeks and Romans 



. 173 


58. 

Greek Literature .... 



. 179 


59. 

Roman Literature .... 



. 182 


60. 

Philosophic Thought 



. 184 


61. 

Scientific Thought, .... 



. 187 


62. 

Greek Art. 



. 193 


























Contents vii 

CHAPTER PAGE 

63. Roman Art.197 

64. The Legacy of Greece and Rome .... 200 

VIII. The Transition from Ancient Times 

65. The “Fall” of Rome ..203 

66 . Preparation for Christianity. 205 

67. Rise and Spread of Christianity .... 209 

68 . Triumph of Christianity.212 

69. Christian Influence on Society.215 

70. The Germans.216 

71. The German Invasions and Their Results . . 218 

IX. The Meddle Ages 

72. The Holy Roman Empire.222 

73. Northmen and Normans.226 

74. Feudalism.230 

75. Knighthood and Chivalry.236 

76. The Byzantine Empire.241 

77. The Arabs and Islam.244 

78. The Crusades.251 

79. Mongols and Ottoman Turks.254 

80. National States.258 

X. Medieval Civilization 

81. The Church.266 

82. Priests, Monks, and Friars.270 

83. The Papacy.274 

84. Country Life.276 

85. Serfdom . 280 

86 . City Life.283 

87. Civic Industry.289 

88 . Civic Trade.292 

89. Architecture: the Cathedrals.298 

90. Education: the Universities.301 

91. Science and Invention.305 

92. Popular Superstitions.309 

93. Manners and Customs.313 

94. National Languages and Literatures . . . 319 

95. The Legacy of the Middle Ages .... 323 

XI. The Transition to Modern Times 

96. Revival of Learning and Art.326 

97. Geographical Discovery.330 

98. The American Indians.339 

99. Colonial Empires.. • 342 



















viii 

CHAPTER 


XII. 


XIII. 


XIV. 


XV. 


Contents 


100 . The Old World and the New. 

101 . The Protestant Reformation. 

102. The Catholic Counter Reformation . 

103. Results of the Reformation. 

The Old Regime in Europe 

104. Absolutism and the Divine Right of Kings 

105. Privileged and Unprivileged Classes. 

106. France under Louis XIV. 

107. Russia under Peter the Great. 

108. Austria and Maria Theresa. 

109. Prussia and Frederick the Great . . . . 

110. The Puritan Revolution in England 

111. The “Glorious Revolution” in England . 

112. The Reformers. 

113. The Enlightened Despots. 

Commerce and Colonies during the Seventeenth and 
Eighteenth Centuries 

114. Mercantilism and Trading Companies 

115. The Dutch Colonial Empire. 

116. Rivalry of the French and English in India 

117. The Settlement of North America .... 

118. The Thirteen Colonies. 

119. Economic Development of the Colonies . 

120 . Political Development of the Colonies 

121 . Rivalry of the French and English in North America 

122 . The American Revolution. 

123. Formation of the United States .... 

124. Progress of Geographical Discovery 

Economic Transformation 

125. Improvements in Manufacturing .... 

126. Improvements in Transportation .... 

127. Improved Communication. 

128. Commerce ........ 

129. Agriculture and Land Tenure. 

130. The Labor Movement. 

131. Government Regulation of Industry 

132. Public Ownership. 

133. Socialism ......... 

134. Modern Industrialism. 

Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 

135. Democratic and National Movements 


PAGE 

344 

347 

352 

354 


358 

360 

365 

370 

373 

374 
377 
382 
386 
390 


394 

396 

399 

402 

406 

409 

411 

413 

416 

422 

424 


428 

434 

441 

444 

448 

452 

455 

458 

460 

464 


470 








Contents 


IX 


CHAPTER PAGE 

136. The French Revolution.474 

137. The Napoleonic Era.481 

138. “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” .... 487 

139. Reconstruction and Reaction.489 

140. The Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 .... 493 

141. Unification of Italy.499 

142. Unification of Germany.507 

143. Political Democracy in Great Britain . . . 512 

144. Government of Great Britain . . . .518 

145. New European Nations . . . . . . 523 

146. Soviet Russia.526 

147. New European Democracies.530 

XVI. Expansion of Europe in the Old World 

148. Greater Europe.536 

149. The Opening-up of Africa.538 

150. The Partition of Africa.542 

151. The Opening-up and Partition of Asia . . . 547 

152. India.540 

153. China.552 

154. Japan.555 

155. The Opening-up and Partition of Oceania . . 559 

156. Australia and New Zealand.561 

157. Occident and Orient.563 

XVII. Expansion of Europe in the New World 

158. Latin-American Independence.570 

159. South America.573 

160. Central America and Mexico.577 

161. The West Indies.579 

162. The United States.581 

163. The United States and Latin America . . . 584 

164. Canada.586 

165. Close of Geographical Discovery .... 589 

XVIII. International Relations 

166. Militarism and Armaments.593 

167. The World War.597 

168. Cost of the World War.602 

169. The Peace Movement.606 

170. International Organization.609 

171. The League of Nations and the “World Court” . 612 

172. Disarmament and the Abolition of War . . . 616 

173. Federation.619 














x Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XIX. Social Betterment 

174. Humanitarian Movements.623 

175. Charity and Philanthropy.628 

176. Emancipation of Women and Children . . . 630 

177. Popular Education and the Higher Learning . . 633 

178. Religious Toleration and the Separation of Church 

and State.636 

179. Social Well-being.641 

XX. Modern Thought and Culture 

180. Rise of Modern Science.643 

181. Development of Modern Science .... 646 

182. Philosophy and the Social Studies .... 651 

183. Literature.654 

184. Music and the Fine Arts.656 

185. Cosmopolitanism.659 

Appendix — Table of Events and Dates .664 

Index and Pronouncing Vocabulary .669 







LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 


Skull of Neanderthal Type... 6 

Skull of Cro-Magnon Type... 6 

Deposits in a Swiss Cave. 7 

Prehistoric Stone Implements. 8 

Palaeolithic Sculpture. 10 

The Oldest Known Repre¬ 
sentation of the Human 

Face. 11 

Swiss Lake Dwelling. 12 

Carved Pillar. 13 

Chinese Picture Writing and 
Later Conventional Char¬ 
acters. 27 

Egyptian and Babylonian 

Writing. 28 

Characters of the Alphabet.. . 29 

Ancient Egyptian and 

Babylonian Numeration. . . 31 

Maya Bar and Dot Numerals 32 

The Great Wall of China. 40 

A Chinese Pagoda. 44 

Confucius. 47 

Hindu Conception of the Earth 54 

Seated Buddha. 55 

Buddhist Prayer Wheel. 56 

The Great Temple of Siva at 

Tangore. 60 

Head of Mummy of Rameses II 63 

Seal of Sargon 1. 64 

Stele of Naram-Sin. 65 

Egyptian Royal Diadem. 66 

Persian King with his Attend¬ 
ants . 67 

Chariot and Horse of an 

Egyptian Nobleman. 69 

Plowing and Sowing in Ancient 
Egypt. 70 


PAGE 

Tax Collecting in Ancient 


Egypt. 72 

A Phoenician War Galley. 73 

The Judgment of the Dead. . . 76 

Hammurabi and the Sun God 77 

A Babylonian Demon. 79 

Royal Sacrifice to the Sun 

God. 80 

The Dying Lioness. 83 

Temple of Amon-Ra at Thebes 84 

An Egyptian Sun Dial. 86 

The Scribe Accroupi. 87 

An Egyptian Scarab. 89 

A Bull’s Head in Relief. 95 

A Cretan Woman. 96 

Woman Spinning. 99 

The Discus Thrower. 102 

An Athenian Trireme. 107 

Cylinder Seal of Darius 1. 109 

A Scythian. 110 

Persian Archers. 112 

Pericles. 117 

A Silver Coin of Syracuse.... 119 

Demosthenes. 120 

Alexander the Great. 121 

The Alexander Mosaic. 122 

Lighthouse of Alexandria. 125 

A Greek Cameo. 129 

An Italian Plowman. 133 

The Capitoline She-Wolf. 134 

Early Roman Bar Money.... 135 

Coop with Sacred Chickens... 137 

Curule Chair and Fasces. 139 

A Roman Standard Bearer.141 

A Testudo. 144 

Youth Reading a Papyrus 
Roll. 148 


xi 
















































List of Illustrations 


xii 

Marcus Tullius Cicero 
A Roman Aqueduct. . 

Wall of Hadrian in Britain. . . 

Roman and Dacian. 

Roman Freight Ship. 

Terra-Cotta Savings Bank_ 

Roman Baths at Bath, 

England. 

An Athenian School. 

House of the Vettii at Pompeii 
Ground Plan of a Pompeian 

House. 

Barber Cutting Hair. 

Roman Litter. 

Greek Banquet. 

Tragic Actor. 

Dancing Girl. 

The Circus Maximus. 

Gladiators. 

Sappho. 

Horace. 

Socrates and Plato. 

Aristotle. 

Orders of Greek Architecture. . 

Plan of the Parthenon. 

Capitals. 

The Pantheon. 

Plan of the Ulpian Basilica. . . 

Arch of Constantine. 

A Musical Contest. 

Roman Altar. 

Priests and Priestesses of Isis 
Burial Niches in the Cata¬ 
combs . 

Christian Tombstone from 

Spain. 

Coin of Constantine. 

Anglo-Saxon Drinking Horn. . 
Romans Destroying a German 

Village. 

Roman Frontier Defense. 

A Page of the Gothic Gospels.. 

Charlemagne. 

Ring Seal of Otto the Great. . 


PAGE 

The Iron Crown of Lombardy 226 

A Viking Ship. 228 

Scene from Bayeux Tapestry . 230 

Chateau Gaillard. 234 

Falconry. 235 

The Making of a Knight. 237 

Mounted Knight. 238 

Champions Fighting. 239 

A Joust. 240 

Naval Battle Showing Use of 

“Greek Fire”. 241 

Mecca. 246 

“Mosque of Omar,” Jeru¬ 
salem. 250 

Combat between Crusaders 

and Moslems. 252 

Seal of a Knight Templar.... 253 

Hut-wagon of the Mongols . . . 255 

A Mongol. 256 

Mohammed II. 257 

The Tower of London. 261 

Coronation Chair, West¬ 
minster Abbey. 264 

Religious Music. 267 

Bishop Consecrating a Bell. . . 268 

Abbey of Saint-Germain des 

Pres, Paris. 270 

A Monk Copyist. 272 

A Windmill. 276 

Farm Work in the Fourteenth 

Century. 279 

A Peasant. 281 

Serf Warming his Hands. 281 

A Sermon at St. Paul’s Cross. 282 

Walls of Carcassonne. 285 

A London Bellman. 286 

Belfry of Bruges. 287 

House of the Butchers’ Guild, 

Hildesheim, Germany. 290' 

Spinning, Carding, and Weav¬ 
ing in the Middle Ages. 292 

Fair in Fifteenth Century.... 293 

Prospecting and Digging for 
Minerals. 297 


PAGE 

154 

155 

157 

158 

161 

162 

166 

169 

171 

172 

173 

174 

175 

176 

177 

178 

179 

180 

183 

185 

186 

194 

195 

196 

197 

198 

199 

202 

206 

208 

211 

212 

213 

216 

217 

219 

221 

224 

225 



























































List of Illustrations 


Cross.Section of Amiens Cathe¬ 
dral . 

Master, Usher, and Boys. 

A University Lecture. 

Halley’s Comet in 1066. 

Firing a Cannon. 

An Early Printing Press. 

An Alchemist in his Labora¬ 
tory. 

The Phoenix. 

The Unicorn. 

Magician Rescued from the 

Devil. 

Water Test for Witchcraft.... 

Knights Playing Chess. 

Bear Baiting. 

Mummers. 

A Miracle Play at Coventry. 

A Medieval Inn. 

Roland at Roncesvalles. 

House of Jacques Coeur, 

Bourges. 

Manor House, Shropshire, 

England. 

Desiderius Erasmus... .. 

Geographical Monsters. 

Embarkation of the Polos at 

Venice. 

Vasco da Gama. 

The Santa Maria, Flagship of 

Columbus. 

A Maya Figurine. 

Aztec Sacrificial Knife. 

The Gold IVJines of Potosl.... 

Worms Cathedral. 

Zwingli. 

St. Ignatius Loyola. 

A Hornbook. 

Costumes of the French Orders 
Carriage of a French Noble.... 

London Tradesmen. 

The French Peasant under 
Taille, Tax, and Corvee.. . . 
Louis XIV as the “Sun King” 


xiii 


PAGE 

Versailles. 367 

“Ridiculous Taste, or the 

Ladies’ Absurdity”. 369 

Peter the Great. 371 

A Contemporary Caricature of 

Peter the Great. 372 

Frederick the Great. 375 

A Puritan Family. 379 

Specimen of Cromwell’s 

Handwriting. 380 

Great Seal of England under 

the Commonwealth. 381 

A Politician. 383 

Voltaire. 388 

Jean Jacques Rousseau. 389 

Catherine II. 391 

New Amsterdam in 1655. 398 

A Mogul Emperor. 400 

The Mayflower . 404 

The Penn Treaty Belt. 405 

Title-page of Poor Richard’s 

Almanac . 406 

A Page from the New England 

Primer . 407 

Harvard College in the Eight¬ 
eenth Century. 408 

New York Colonial Paper 

Money. 410 

Benjamin Franklin. 411 

Join or Die. 413 

A Stamp of 1765. 417 

Opening Lines of the Declara¬ 
tion of Independence. 418 

Signatures of the Treaty of 

Paris, 1783. 420 

The Discovery . 425 

Penn’s Cottage,” Philadelphia 427 

A Spinning Wheel. 430 

Arkwright’s Spinning Machine 431 
Cartwright’s First Power Loom 431 

Whitney’s Cotton Gin. 432 

Model of Howe’s Sewing 

Machine. 433 

A Citizen and his Wife. 435 


PAGE 

300 

304 

305 

306 

307 

308 

310 

311 

311 

312 

313 

314 

315 

316 

317 

319 

322 

327 

328 

329 

331 

332 

335 

337 

341 

342 

345 

349 

351 

353 

357 

360 

362 

363 

364 

365 




























































XIV 


List of Illustrations 


PAGE 

An Eighteenth-century Stage¬ 


coach. 435 

The Clermont, 1807. 436 

The Rocket, 1830. 437 

A Precursor of the Automobile 438 

The Wright Biplane. 439 

A “Boneshaker”. 440 

Morse’s First Telegraph 

Instrument, 1837. 441 

The Original Atlantic Cable. . . 441 

Thomas A. Edison. 442 

First Adhesive Penny Post¬ 
age Stamp. 442 

The Sholes (Remington) 

Typewriter, 1873. 443 

McCormick Reaper. 449 

The Earl of Shaftesbury. 456 

Robert Owen. 461 

Karl Marx. 462 


The Storming of the Bastille 476 
Forging a New Constitution 477 
The Destruction of Feudalism 478 
Napoleon’s Birthplace, Ajaccio 482 
French Dragoon of the Time 


of the Consulate. 483 

Cross of the Legion of Honor. . 485 

Seal of the First French Re¬ 
public, 1792-1804. 488 

Metternich. 492 

Arc de Triomphe, Paris. 495 

Caricature of Louis Philippe. . 497 

Medal in Honor of Kossuth 499 

Mazzini. 501 

“The Right Leg in the Boot at 

Last”. 505 

The Vatican, Rome. 506 

“VseVictis”. 511 

The Union Jack. 513 

Canvassing for Votes. 514 

Gladstone. 516 

Windsor Castle. 519 

House of Commons Mace.... 521 

No. 10, Downing Street. 522 

Powder Gate, Prague. 525 


PAGE 

Lenin. 527 

Chamber of Deputies, Paris 535 

David Livingstone. *540 

Henry M. Stanley. 543 

Cecil Rhodes. 544 

“The Lion’s Vengeance on the 

Bengal Tiger”. 551 

Empress-Dowager of China... 553 

Sun Yat Sen. 554 

Japanese Soldier of the Eight¬ 
eenth Century. 556 

Sign Manual and Seal of Mut- 

suhito. 557 

Simon Bolivar. 572 

James Monroe. 583 

Robert E. Peary. 590 

“The Blessings of Peace” .... 594 

Hugo Grotius. 608 

The Christ of the Andes. 611 

The Peace Palace at The Hague 615 

The Ducking Stool. 625 

Stocks. 626 

Elizabeth Fry. 627 

William Booth. 628 

Henri Dunant. 629 

Susan B. Anthony. 632 

Boys’ Sports. 633 

First High School in the U. S.. 634 

Medal of Louis XIV. 637 

John Wesley. 639 

Nicholas Copernicus. 643 

Galileo’s Telescopes. 644 

Death Mask of Sir Isaac 

Newton. 645 

Sir Charles Lyell.*. 648 

The Hooker Telescope. 650 

Adam Smith. 653 

Shakespeare’s Signature...... 655 

Moliere. 655 

A Fifteenth-century Organ ... 656 

Queen Elizabeth’s Cithern.... 657 

Mozart’s Spinet. 658 

Men’s Fashions, 1828-1829. . . 659 

Crinolines, 1864. 660 




























































LIST OF MAPS AND CHARTS 

PAGE 

Europe during the Ice Age.4 

Centers of Civilization in the Old World. 16 

Races of Men. Facing 20 

The Dispersal of Mankind.23 

Distribution of the White Race in Antiquity, 1000-500 b.c. . Facing 28 

Physical Map of Asia. Facing 36 

The Peoples of Asia. Facing 38 

Chinese Empire under the T‘ang Dynasty.41 

Expansion of Buddhism.57 

The Near East and Greece. Facing 62 

The Persian Empire about 500 b.c. 68 

Colonization of the Mediterranean ..... Facing 74 

Physical Map of Europe. Facing 92 

Mediterranean Basin.93 

The Greeks in the Tigean.97 

The World according to Homer.100 

The Persian Invasions of Greece.Ill 

The Athenian Empire. Facing 114 

The Vicinity of Athens.115 

Empire of Alexander the Great, 336-323 b.c. . . . Facing 124 

The Kingdoms of Alexander’s Successors .... Facing 124 

The /Etolian and Achaean Leagues (about 229 b.c.) .... 127 

Italy before the Rise of Rome. Facing 132 

The Vicinity of Rome.135 

Rome in Italy. Facing 142 

Rome and Carthage at the Beginning of the Second Punic War . . 145 

The Roman Empire at its Greatest Extent . . . Between 156-157 

The World according to Ptolemy.190 

Europe at the Deposition of Romulus Augustulus, 476 a.d. Facing 204 

Missionary Journeys of St. Paul.210 

Growth of Christianity to the End of the Fourth Century . Facing 212 

Teutonic Migrations and Conquests. Facing 218 

Europe in the Age of Charlemagne, 800 a.d. . . . Facing 224 

Discoveries and Settlements of the Northmen.227 

Possessions of the Count of Champagne.232 

Vicinity of Constantinople.244 

Expansion of Islam. Facing 246 

xv 
















XVI 


List of Maps and Charts 


PAGE 

Asia under the Mongols. Facing 256 

The British Isles during the Middle Ages.. 259 

Growth of Christianity from the Fifth to the Fourteenth Cen¬ 
tury ......... Between 268-269 

Medieval Monasteries.273 

Plan of Hitchin Manor, Hertfordshire.278 

A Medieval Walled Town in Relation to its Fields .... 284 

Trade Names in the Streets of Bruges.291 

Trade Routes between Northern and Southern Europe in the 13th and 

14th Centuries.295 

Plan of Salisbury Cathedral, England.299 

Medieval Universities.302 

The Peoples of Europe at the Beginning of the Tenth Century Facing 320 

The Hereford Map, 1280 333 

Portuguese Exploration of the African Coast.334 

Behaim’s Globe. . 336 

Culture Areas of Latin America.340 

Portuguese and Spanish Colonial Empires in the Sixteenth Cen¬ 
tury . .. Between 342-343 

The World according to Ortelius.346 

Religions of Europe about 1648 . 355 

English Trading Companies. Facing 394 

East Indies.397 

India in 1783 401 

North America after the Peace of Paris, 1783 421 

Colonial Empires in the Eighteenth Century . . Between 424-425 

Economic Europe. Between 430-431 

World Production of Coal, Pig Iron, and Petroleum .... 434 

Commercial Development of the World . . . Between 446-447 

Inclosures in England in the Eighteenth Century .... 450 

Growth of Population in the British Empire and the United States, 

1600-1921 465 

Occupations of Mankind. Facing 466 

Density of the World’s Population. Facing 468 

Vicinity of Paris.475 

The Napoleonic Empire.486 

Revolutionary Movements in Europe, 1820-1848 .... 494 

Unification of Italy, 1815-1870 . 502 

Unification of Germany, 1815-1871. Facing 508 

Alsace-Lorraine . . . . . . . . . . .510 

Vicinity of London.517 

Europe after the Peace Conference at Paris, 1919-1920 Between 524-525 

Dismemberment of the Russian Empire.528 

Governments of the World. Facing 534 


















List of Maps and Charts xvii 

PAGE. 

The World Powers, 1815 . . . . . . . Facing 536 

Peoples of Africa.539 

Religions of Africa.541 

Exploration and Partition of Airica .... Between 544-545 

The Suez Canal.547 

The European Advance in Asia. Between 550-551 

Expansion of Japan. Facing 558 

The Pacific Ocean. Facing 560 

The Australian Commonwealth.562 

Indo-European Expansion.564 

The World Powers. Between 568-569 

Exclusion of Spain and Portugal from South America . Facing 572 

Commercial Languages of America. Facing 574 

The Partition of the Caribbean.580 

North America since 1783 . Facing 582 

Relief Map of the Panama Canal.584 

Discoveries in the Polar Regions.591 

The World War in 1918.599 

Chart showing Men Killed in Action or by Wounds .... 603 

Money Cost to the Combatant Nations for Direct War Expenses, to 

the Spring of 1919.604 

The League of Nations.613 

Growth of the British Empire. Facing 620 

The United States — Secession.621 

Religions of the World.640 

Asiatic and European Civilization. Facing 658 

Languages of the World. Facing 660* 



























I 




LIST OF PLATES 


PAGE 

Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C. . . . . Frontispiece 

Stonehenge. Facing 12 

Queen Nefertiti.66 

Tut-Ankh-Amen’s Throne.80 

Hermes and Dionysus.102 

The Aphrodite of Melos.103 

Temple of Poseidon at Psestum.106 

The Acropolis of Athens (Restoration).118 

The Acropolis of Athens from the Southwest.119 

Julius Caesar.152 

Augustus.152 

The Roman Forum.153 

Pompeii from an Airplane.164 

Graeco-Roman Theater at Taormina, Sicily.176 

A Restoration of the Parthenon.194 

Oriental, Greek, and Roman Coins.200 

Ancient and Medieval Gems.201 

Rheinstein Castle.242 

Sancta Sophia, Constantinople.243 

Campanile and Doge’s Palace, Venice.298 

Piazza del Duomo, Pisa.299 

Magdalen College and Bridge, Oxford.304 

Milan Cathedral.305 

Illuminated Manuscript.322 

Dante.328 

Shakespeare.328 

Raphael’s “School of Athens”.329 

Martin Luther.350 

John Calvin.350 

The Taj Mahal.400 

Washington.422 

James Watt.436 

Robert Fulton.436 

Early Passenger Trains.437 

Napoleon as First Consul.482 

Houses of Parliament, London.520 


xix 













XX 


List of Plates 


PAGE 

Choir of Westminster Abbey.521 

Geneva ............ 616 

Lincoln.622 

Panorama of Paris.662 

The Eiffel Tower.663 







SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY 

Students of history should have access to the American Historical Review 
(N. Y., 1895 to date, quarterly, $ 4.00 a year). This journal, the organ of 
the American Historical Association, contains articles by p er i 0( jicals 
scholars, critical reviews of all important works, and notes 
and news. The Historical Outlook (formerly the History Teacher's Magazine) 
is edited in cooperation with committees of the American Historical Associa¬ 
tion and the National Council for the Social Studies (Philadelphia, 1909 to 
date, monthly, $ 2.00 a year). History, the organ of the Historical Associ¬ 
ation, is a British publication for teachers (London, 1916 to date, quarterly, 
85 . 6 d.). Every well-equipped school library should contain the files of the 
National Geographic Magazine (Washington, 1890 to date, monthly, $ 3.00 a 
year) and of Art and Archceology (Washington, 1914 to date, monthly, $ 5.00 
a year). These two periodicals make a special feature of illustrations. 
Current History (N. Y., 1914 to date, monthly, $ 3.00 a year) contains much 
matter of contemporary interest. 

Useful books for the teacher’s library include Henry Johnson, The Teach¬ 
ing of History (N. Y., 1915 , Macmillan, $ 1 . 80 ), R. M. Tryon, The Teaching of 
History in Junior and Senior High Schools (Boston, 1921 , 

Ginn & Co., $ 1 . 48 ), H. B. George, Historical Evidence Works on the 
(N. Y., 1909 , Oxford University Press, American Branch, tg^hing^f 
$ 1 . 80 ), Frederic Harrison, The Meaning of History and Other history 
Historical Pieces (new ed., N. Y., 1900 , Macmillan, $ 2 . 00 ), 

J. H. Robinson, The New History (N. Y., 1912 , Macmillan, $ 2 . 00 ), and H. B. 
George, The Relations of History and Geography ( 4 th ed., N. Y., 1910 , Oxford 
University Press, American Branch, $ 2 . 25 ). The following reports are 
indispensable : 

Historical Sources in Schools. Report to the New England History Teachers’ 
Association by a Select Committee (N. Y., 1902, out of print). 

A History Syllabus for Secondary Schools. Report by a Special Committee of the 
New England History Teachers’ Association (N. Y., 1904, Heath, $1.60). 

A Bibliography of History for Schools and Libraries. Published under the auspices 
of the Association of History Teachers of the Middle States and Maryland 
(2d ed., N. Y., 1915, Longmans, Green & Co., 60 cents). 

For chronology, genealogies, lists of sovereigns, and other data the most 
valuable works are Arthur Hassall, European History, 476 - 
1920 (new ed., N. Y., 1920 , Macmillan, $ 4 . 00 ), G. P. Putnam, Dictionaries 
Tabular Views of Universal History (new ed., N. Y., 1915 , encyclopedias 
Putnam, $ 3 . 00 ), and K. J. Ploetz, A Handbook of Universal 
History, translated by W. H. Tillinghast (new ed., Boston, 1915 , Houghton 
Mifflin Co., $ 4 . 00 ). 


xxi 


XXII 


Suggestions for Further Study 


Atlases 


Wall maps 
and charts 


An admirable collection of maps for school use is W. R. Shepherd, His¬ 
torical Atlas (new ed., N. Y., 1923 , Holt, $ 3 . 90 ), with about two hundred 
and fifty maps covering the historical field. Another 
excellent work is Putnam’s Historical Atlas, Medieval and 
Modern, edited by Ramsay Muir, George Philip, and Robert McElroy 
(N. Y., 1927 , Putnam, $ 4 . 50 ). Much use can be made of the Literary and 
Historical Atlas of Europe, by J. G. Bartholomew, in “Everyman’s Library” 
(N. Y., 1910 , Dutton, $ 1 . 00 ). Other atlases in the same collection are de¬ 
voted to Asia, Africa and Australasia, and America, respectively. 

The Webster-Knowlton-Hazen European History Maps, prepared by Hut¬ 
ton Webster, D. C. Knowlton, and C. D. Hazen, include nineteen maps 
for ancient history and twenty-six for medieval and modern 
history (Chicago, A. J. Nystrom & Co.). The maps in this 
series are on a very large scale, omit all irrelevant detail, 
present place names in the modern English form, and deal with cultural as 
well as with political subjects. They are accompanied by a Teacher’s 
Manual for each of the two sections. A somewhat similar series of wall 
maps, forty-three in number, has been prepared by J. H. Breasted, C. F. 
Huth, and S. B. Harding (Chicago, Denoyer-Geppert Co.). 

The “Studies” following each chapter of this book include various exer¬ 
cises for which small outline maps are required. The Historical Outline 
Maps and Exercises, prepared by Hutton Webster and W. P. 
Webb, consist of three books devoted, respectively, to early 
European history, modern European history, and world history (New York, 
D. C. Heath and Co., each 60 cents.). 

Photographs of ancient works of art may be obtained from the foreign 
publishers in Naples, Florence, Rome, Munich, Paris, Athens, and London, 
or from their American agents. In addition to photographs 
and lantern slides, a collection of stereoscopic views is very 
helpful in giving vividness and interest to historical instruction. The Key¬ 
stone stereographs, prepared by the Keystone View Company, Meadville, 
Penn., are cordially recommended. Notable collections include Lehmann’s 
Geographical Pictures, Historical Pictures, and Types of Nations, and Cybul- 
ski’s Historical Pictures (Chicago, A. J. Nystrom & Co., and Denoyer- 
Geppert Co.; each picture separately mounted on rollers). 

To vitalize the study of geography and history there is nothing better 
than the reading of modern books of travel. The school 
traveTand library should contain Hammerton’s Wonders of the Past 
description (Putnam, 4 vols.) and Johnston and Guest’s The World of 
To-day (Putnam, 4 vols.). These two series are written in 
a popular style, are accurate, and are very well illustrated. 

The following works of historical fiction comprise only a selection from 
a very large number of books suitable for supplementary reading. For 
extended bibliographies see E. A. Baker, A Guide to Historical Fiction, and 


Outline maps 


Illustrations 


Suggestions for Further Study xxiii 

Jonathan Nield, A Guide to the Best Historical Novels and Tales. An ex¬ 
cellent list of historical stories, especially designed for 
children, will be found in the Bibliography of , History for 
Schools and Libraries , parts viii-ix. See also Hannah 
Logasa, Historical Fiction Suitable for Junior and Senior High Schools (Phil¬ 
adelphia, 1927, McKinley Publishing Co., $1.00). 

Blackmore, R. D. Lorna Doone. Monmouth’s Rebellion, 1685 . 
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward. The Last Days of Pompeii. 

Dickens, Charles. The Tale of Two Cities. London and Paris at the time of the 
French Revolution. 

Eliot, George. Romola. Florence in the latter part of the fifteenth century. 
Hugo, Victor. Ninety-Three. Insurrection in La Vendee, 1793 . 

- Notre Dame de Paris. Paris, late fifteenth century. 

Irving, Washington. The Alhambra. Sketches of the Moors and Spaniards. 
Kingsley, Charles. Hypatia. Alexandria, 391 a.d. 

It estward Hoi Voyages of Elizabethan seamen and the struggle with Spain. 
Kipling, Rudyard. Puck of Pook's Hill. Roman occupation of Britain. 

Lever, Charles. Charles O’Malley. The Peninsular War. 

- Tom Bourke of “Ours.” French wars of the Consulate and Empire. 

Reade, Charles. The Cloister and the Hearth. Eve of the Reformation. 

Scott, (Sir) Walter. The Talisman. Reign of Richard I, 1193. 

- Ivanhoe. Richard I, 1194. 

Shorthouse, J. H. John Inglesant. Life in England and Italy during the seven¬ 
teenth century. 

Sienkiewicz, Henryk. With Fire and Sword. Poland in the seventeenth century. 
Thackeray, W. M. Henry Esmond. England during the reigns of William III 
and Queen Anne. 

Tolstoy, (Count) L. N. War and Peace. Napoleon’s campaigns in Russia. 

- Sevastopol. Crimean War. 

Wallace Lew. Ben Hur; A Tale of the Christ. 

Waterloo, Stanley. The Story of Ab. Prehistoric life. 

It is unnecessary to emphasize the value, as collateral reading, of his¬ 
torical poems and plays. To the brief list which follows Historical 
should be added the material in Katharine Lee Bates and poetry 
Katharine Coman, English History told by English Poets (Macmillan) and 
M. E. Windsor and J. Turral, Lyra Historica (Oxford University Press). 

Browning, Elizabeth B. The Cry of the Children, and The Forced Recruit. 
Browning, Robert. Pheidippides, Herve Riel , and An Incident of the French 
Camp. 

Burns, Robert. The Battle of Bannockburn. 

Byron (Lord). Song of Saul before His Last Battle, The Destruction of Sennacherib, 
Belshazzar’s Feast, “The Isles of Greece” (Don Juan, canto iii, between stanzas 
86-87), “The Eve of Waterloo” (Childe Harold, canto iii, stanzas 21-28), and 
Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte. 

Campbell, Thomas. Hohenlinden, The Battle of the Baltic, Rule Britannia, and 
Ye Mariners of England. 


XXIV 


Suggestions for Further Study 


Cowper, William. Loss of the “Royal George .” 

Dryden, John. Alexander's Feast. 

Halleck, Fitz-Greene. Marco Bozzaris. 

Hemans, Felicia. The Landing of the Pilgrims. 

Kipling, Rudyard. Recessional, and The White Man's Burden. 

Longfellow, H. W. The Skeleton in Armor, The Norman Baron, The Belfry of 
Bruges, Nuremberg, and The White Czar. 

Lowell, J. R. Kossuth, and Villafranca. 

Macaulay, T. B. Lays of Ancient Rome, The Armada, The Battle of Ivry, and The 
Battle of Naseby. 

Miller, Joaquin. Columbus. 

Milton, John. Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity, and To the Lord General 
Cromwell. 

Rossetti, D. G. The White Ship. 

Schiller, Friedrich. The Maid of Orleans, William Tell, Maria Stuart, and 
Wallenstein. 

Scott, (Sir) Walter. “Flodden Field” (Marmion, canto vi, stanzas 19-27,33- 
35)* 

Shakespeare, William. Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, King 
John, Richard the Second, Henry the Fourth, parts i and ii, Henry the Fifth, 
Henry the Sixth, parts i, ii, and iii, Richard the Third, Henry the Eighth, and 
The Merchant of Venice. 

Taylor, Bayard. The Song in Camp. 

Tennyson, Alfred. Ulysses, Boadicea, St. Telemachus, St. Simeon Stylites, 
Sir Galahad, “ The Revenge”: A Ballad of the Fleet, Ode on the Death of the 
Duke of Wellington, The Charge of the Light Brigade, and The Defense of Luck¬ 
now. 

Thackeray, W. M. King Canute. 

Wolfe, Charles. The Burial of Sir John Moore. 

Full information regarding the best translations of the sources of history 
may be found in one of the Reports previously cited — Historical Sources 
Sources Schools, parts ii-v. Hutton Webster’s Readings in Early 

European History (Heath, $2.00) and Readings in Modern 
European History (Heath, $2.00) provide narrative and biographical selec¬ 
tions from the sources, while the same editor’s Historical Source Book (Heath, 
$1.60) furnishes the text of important documents with introductions and 
notes. Use may also be made of the following collections: 

Botsford, G. W., and Botsford, Lillie S. Source Book of Ancient History (N. Y., 
1912 , Macmillan, $ 2 . 00 ). 

Davis, W. S. Readings in Ancient History (Boston, 1912 , Allyn & Bacon, 2 vols., 
$ 2 . 80 ). 

Ogg, F. A. A Source Book of Medieval History (N. Y., 1907 , American Book Co., 
$ 1 . 72 ). 

Robinson, J. H. Readings in European History (abridged ed., Boston, 1906 , Ginn, 
$ 2 . 50 ). 

Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History (N. Y., 
1894 - 1899 , Longmans, Green & Co., 6 vols., each $ 2 . 00 ). 


Suggestions for Further Study 


xxv 


The following list is restricted to books dealing with the history of civil¬ 
ization. Many of them are of recent publication, inexpensive, easily pro¬ 
cured, and well adapted in style and choice of topics to the 
needs of high-school students. Some more advanced and 
costly books are indicated by an asterisk (*). For detailed 
bibliographies, often accompanied by critical estimates, see C. K. Adams, 
A Manual of Historical Literature , the Bibliography of History for Schools 
and Libraries , parts iii-vi, and especially A Guide to Historical Literature , 
compiled by a committee of the American Historical Association, under the 
general editorship of G. A. Dutcher. 

Adams, G. B. Civilization during the Middle Ages (new ed., N. Y., 1914, Scribner 
$2.75). 

Baikie, James. The Life of the Ancient East (London, 1923, Black, ios. 6 d.). A 
popular survey of modem excavations and their results. 

♦Bailey, Cyril (editor). The Legacy of Rome (N. Y., 1923, Oxford University 
Press, American Branch, $3.00). Essays on Roman civilization by distin¬ 
guished scholars. 

Bateson, Mary. Medieval England (N. Y., 1903, Putnam, $2.50). Deals with 
economic and social life; “Story of the Nations.” 

Baynes, N. H. The Byzantine Empire (N. Y., 1926, Holt, 90 cents). “Home 
University Library.” 

♦Bevan, E. R., and Singer, Charles (editors). The Legacy of Israel (N. Y., 1927, 
Oxford University Press, American Branch, $3.50). 

Blackmar, F. W. History of Human Society (N. Y., 1926, Scribner, $3.00). Con¬ 
tains good material on the history of civilization. 

♦Botsford, G. W., and Sihler, E. G. Hellenic Civilization (N. Y., 1915, Columbia 
University Press, $4.00). Lengthy extracts from the sources, with commentary 
and bibliographies. 

♦Bowman, Isaiah. The New World. Problems in Political Geography (N. Y., 1922, 
World Book Co., $6.00). 

♦Breasted, J. H. A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest 
(new ed., N. Y., 1909, Scribner, $7.00). 

Cheyney, E. P. Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England (new 
ed., N. Y., 1920, Macmillan, $2.60). 

- European Background of American History, 1300-1600 (N. Y., 1904* Harper, 

$2.25). “American Nation Series.” 

Croiset, Maurice. Hellenic Civilization, translated by P. B. Thomas (N. Y., 1925. 
Knopf, $2.50). 

♦Crump, G. C., and Jacob, E. F. (editors). The Legacy of the Middle Ages (N. Y., 
1926, Oxford University Press, American Branch, $3.50). 

Davis, H. W. C. Medieval Europe (N. Y., 1911, Holt, 90 cents). “Home Univer¬ 
sity Library.” 

Davis, W. S. Life on a Medieval Barony (N. Y., 1923, Harper, $3.50)- Pre¬ 
sents a picture of social and economic conditions in thirteenth-century 
France. 

♦De Burgh, W. G. The Legacy of the Ancient World (N. Y., 1924. Macmillan, 
$6.00). 


XXVI 


Suggestions for Further Study 


Ellwood, C. A. Cultural Evolution (N. Y., 1927, Century Co., $2.50). A simple 
account of social origins and development. 

♦Evans, Joan. Life in Medieval France (N. Y., 1925, Oxford University Press, 
American Branch, $5.25). 

Fowler, W. W. Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero (N. Y., 1909, Macmillan, 
$3.00). 

Giles, A. F. The Roman Civilization (N. Y., 1919, Nelson, $3.00). Finely illus¬ 
trated. 

Gosse, A. B. The Civilization of the Ancient Egyptians (N. Y., 1915, Nelson, $3.00). 
Finely illustrated. 

Gowen, H. H. Asia. A Short History from the Earliest Times to the Present Day 
(Boston, 1926, Little, Brown & Co., $3.50). 

Gras, S. N. B. An Introduction to Economic History (N. Y., 1922, Harper, $2.25). 

Hattersley, A. F. A Short History of Western Civilization (N. Y., 1927, 
Macmillan, $2.75). 

Hearnshaw, F. J. C. (editor). Medieval Contributions to Modern Civilization 
(London, 1921, Harrap, 10s. 6 d.). 

Hell, Joseph. The Arab Civilization, translated by S. K. Bukhsh (Cambridge, 
1926, Heffer, 8s. 6 d.). 

Hogarth, D. G. The Ancient East (N. Y., 1915, Holt, 90 cents). “Home Univer¬ 
sity Library.” 

Hoyland, J. S. A Brief History of Civilization (N. Y., 1925, Oxford University 
Press, American Branch, $3.50). 

Hudson, W. H. The Story of the Renaissance (N. Y., 1912, Holt, $2.50). A well- 
written volume. 

*Hulme, E. M. The Renaissance, the Protestant Revolution, and the Catholic Refor¬ 
mation in Continental Europe (new ed., N. Y., 1915, Century Co., $3.50). 

Jacobs, Joseph. The Story of Geographical Discovery (N. Y., 1898, Appleton, 
$1.00). 

*Jastrow, Morris. The Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria (Philadelphia, 1915, 
Lippincott, $7.50). A finely illustrated work, popular in character. 

Johnston, (Sir) H. H. The Opening-Up of Africa (N. Y., 1911, Holt, 90 cents). 
“Home University Library.” 

Knight, M. M. Economic History of Europe to the End of the Middle Ages (Boston, 
1926, Houghton Mifflin Co., $3.00). 

Libby, Walter. An Introduction to the History of Science (Boston, 1917, Houghton 
Mifflin Co., $2.35). 

♦Livingstone, R. W. (editor). The Legacy of Greece (N. Y., 1921, Oxford Univer¬ 
sity Press, American Branch, $2.50). Essays on Greek civilization by distin¬ 
guished scholars. 

Mahapfy, (Sir) J. P. What have the Greeks done for Modern Civilization? (N. Y., 
igog, Putnam, $2.50). 

Marvin, F. S. The Living Past (new ed., N. Y., 1915, Oxford University Press, 
American Branch, $2.00). Suggestive survey of intellectual history. 

•- The Century of Hope (N. Y., 1919, Oxford University Press, American Branch, 

$3.00). A sketch of intellectual and social history between 18x5 and 1914. 

♦Munro, D. C., and Sellery, G. C. Medieval Civilization (new ed., N. Y., 1907, 
Century Co., $2.50). Translated selections from standard works by French 
and German scholars. 


Suggestions for Further Study 


XXVll 


Myres, J. L. The Dawn of History (N. Y., 1912, Holt, 90 cents). “Home Univer¬ 
sity Library.” 

♦Osborn, H. F. Men of the Old Stone Age (N. Y., 1915, Scribner, $5.00). An 
authoritative, interesting, and amply illustrated work. 

♦Randall, J. H. (Jr.). The Making of the Modern Mind (Boston, 1926, Houghton 
Mifflin Co., $3.50). A survey of the intellectual background of the present 
age. 

Reinach, Salomon. Apollo; an Illustrated Manual of the History of Art through 
the Ages, translated by Florence Simmonds (new ed., N. Y., 1914, Scribner, 
$2.00). The best short work on the subject. 

Salzman, L. F. English Life in the Middle Ages (N. Y., 1926, Oxford University 
Press, American Branch, $3.50). 

♦Smith, Preserved. The Age of the Reformation (N. Y., 1920, Holt, $5.00). 
“American Historical Series.” 

Stawell, F. M., and Marvin, F. S. The Making of the Western Mind (London, 
1923, Methuen, 7 s. 6 d.). A survey of European culture. 

♦Stobart, J. C. The Glory that was Greece. A Survey of Hellenic Culture and 
Civilization (new ed., Philadelphia, 1915, Lippincott, $7.50). 

*- The Grandeur that was Rome. A Survey of Roman Culture and Civilization 

(new ed., Philadelphia, 1920, Lippincott, $7.50). 

Tapp an, Eva M. When Knights were Bold (Boston, 1912, Houghton Mifflin Co., 
$3.00). An economic and social study of feudal times; charmingly written for 
young people. 

♦Tarn, W. W. Hellenistic Civilization (London, 1927, Arnold, 165.). The best book 
on the subject. 

♦Thorndike, Lynn. A Short History of Civilization (N. Y., 1926, Crofts, $4.00). 
A scholarly, original work for college use and the general reader. 

Tucker, T. G. Life in Ancient Athens (N. Y., 1906, Macmillan, $2.40). 

- Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul (N. Y., 1910, Macmillan, $3.50). 

Tyler, J. M. The New Stone Age in Northern Europe (N. Y., 1921, Scribner, $3.00). 

Van Loon, H. The Story of Mankind (N. Y., 1920, Boni and Liveright, $5.00). 

Webster, Hutton. History of the Far East (N. Y., 1923, Heath, $1.40). 

- History of Latin America (N. Y., 1924, Heath, $1.64). 

♦Wells, H. G. Outline of History (new ed., N. Y., 1927, Macmillan, $7.50). An 
illustrated edition of this famous work. 

♦Zimmern, A. E. The Greek Commonwealth (3d ed., N. Y., 1922, Oxford University 
Press, American Branch, $3.80). Political and economic life in fifth-century 
Athens. 



HISTORY OF MANKIND 
















HISTORY OF MANKIND 


CHAPTER I 

PREHISTORY 
1 . Civilization 

History is a narrative of what civilized men have thought or 
done in past times — whether a day, a year, a century, or 
thousands of years ago. Since men do not live in Definition of 
isolation, but everywhere in association, history is histor y 
concerned with social groups and especially with states and 
nations. Just as biography describes the life of individuals, so 
history relates the rise, progress, and decline of human societies. 

History does not limit its attention to a fraction of the com¬ 
munity to the exclusion of the rest. It does not deal solely 
with rulers and warriors, with forms of government, Scope of 
public affairs, and domestic or foreign wars. More history 
and more, history becomes an account of the entire life of a 
people. The historian wants to learn about their houses, 
furniture, costumes, and food; what occupations they followed; 
what schools they supported; what beliefs and superstitions 
they held; what amusements and festivals they enjoyed. 
Human progress in invention, science, art, music, literature, 
morals, religion, and other aspects of civilization is what chiefly 
interests the historical student of to-day. 

Civilization is a recent thing, almost a thing of yesterday. 
It began not more than five or six thousand years ago in the 
river valleys of Egypt and western Asia. The Dawn of 
Egyptians and Babylonians by this time were civilization 
cultivating the soil, laying out roads and canals, working mines, 
building cities, organizing stable governments, and keeping 


2 


Prehistory 


written records. All the rest of the world was then inhabited 
by savage and barbarous peoples, whose descendants still dwell 
in the wilder and less accessible parts of every continent. 

The savage is a mere child of nature. He secures food from 
wild plants and animals; he knows nothing of metals, but 
Savagery and makes his tools and weapons of wood, bone, and 
barbarism stone; he wears little or no clothing; and his home 
is merely a cave, a rock shelter, or a rude bark hut. Such 
miserable folk occupy the interior of South America, Africa, 
Australia, New Guinea, the Philippines, and other regions. 
Barbarism forms a transitional stage between savagery and 
civilization. The barbarian has gained some control of nature. 
He has learned to sow and reap the fruits of the earth — in¬ 
stead of depending entirely upon hunting and fishing for a 
food supply — to domesticate animals, and ordinarily to use 
implements of metal. Barbarous peoples at the present time in¬ 
clude certain North American Indians, the Pacific Islanders, and 
most of the African negroes. 

The facts collected by modern science make it certain that 
early man was first a savage and then a barbarian before he 
Human reached any degree of civilization. We know this, 

progress not on the evidence of written records, such as 

inscriptions and books, but from the things which he left be¬ 
hind him in many parts of the world, particularly in Europe 
and the Mediterranean region. These include a few of his own 
bones, many bones of animals killed by him, and a great variety 
of tools, weapons, and other objects. Systematic study of such 
relics and remains began during the nineteenth century. The 
study is still in its infancy, but it has gone far enough to afford 
some idea of human progress before the dawn of civilization. 

2 . Antiquity of Man 

Astronomy and geology present a wonderful picture of the 
earth in past ages. The astronomer tells us that space is for the 
Origin of the most part mere emptiness, that at vast intervals 
earth in this emptiness are the so-called “fixed stars,” 

that the sun is such a star, and that it threw off, one by one, 


Antiquity of Man 3 

the planets of the solar system. Our earth thus separated from 
the parent sun while still in a gaseous condition. 

The geologist tells us that in process of time the cooling earth 
gradually raised over its molten interior a thin crust of fire-fused 
(igneous) rocks. Then the steam in the atmos- Life on the 
phere began to condense and, falling upon this earth 
crust, formed the first rivers, lakes, and seas. The dust and 
rock particles in the water accumulated in layers, or strata, 
which hardened into the stratified rocks, such as sandstones 
and mudstones. They, reach a total thickness of not less than 
fifty miles, it is estimated, and contain what geologists call fossils. 
These are the remains of plants and animals which, through 
natural agencies, have been buried in the earth and so preserved. 

Most of geological time since the origin of the earth is divided 
into three great periods. The first or Primary period saw the 
appearance of plants, such as seaweeds, mosses, Geological 
ferns, and finally of huge-stemmed trees, whose time 
abundant vegetation formed our coal measures. It saw also 
the appearance of animals, beginning with simple invertebrate 
creatures which lived in the water, and afterward fishes and 
amphibians. The Secondary period was especially the age of 
enormous reptiles, whose skeletons are shown in museums. 
During this time bird-like animals developed and became true 
birds as they grew wings and modified their reptilian scales into 
feathers. In the third or Tertiary period there appeared for the 
first time a variety and abundance of mammals. 

The Tertiary period was characterized by a semi-tropical 
climate, even in the Arctic region. Toward the close of 
the Tertiary profound climatic changes began to ^ ^ 
occur in northern latitudes, producing what is 
called the Ice Age. An immense ice field formed in the lands 
encircling the North Pole and gradually moved southward. 
An icy mass hundreds of feet in thickness covered North 
America to the valleys of the Ohio and the Missouri, Asia 
north of the 50th parallel (except the Siberian lowlands, 
which represented gulfs in the Arctic Ocean), Russia, and 
western Europe to the valleys of the Rhine and Thames. 


4 


Prehistory 


Great glaciers also arose in the Alps, Pyrenees, and Caucasus 
and descended from these mountains into the plains. Modern 
Greenland, which is similarly buried in ice, except at the edges, 
doubtless affords a good picture of what much of the northern 



The dotted areas indicate parts of the ancient mainland now covered by the sea, but 
elevated above sea level during the earlier part of the Ice Age. The black line shows the 
southern limit of the Scandinavian ice field at the time of its greatest extension. 


hemisphere looked like in glacial times. The Ice Age, despite 
its name, was not one of uninterrupted cold. There seem to 
have been four retreats of the ice, resulting in three interglacial 
periods and a final period called postglacial. Estimates of 
the duration of the Ice Age vary considerably; one estimate 
makes it begin about 500,000 years ago. 

The geography of Europe in the Ice Age was unlike what it 
is to-day. Considerable areas now beneath the Atlantic Ocean 


















Antiquity of Man 


5 


were then dry land. Great Britain and Ireland formed part 
of the Continent, and no North Sea separated them from Scan¬ 
dinavia. The Mediterranean basin contained two Europe in the 
inland seas. Europe was united to both Africa Ice A s e 
and Asia, where are now the Strait of Gibraltar, the island of 
Sicily, and the Dardanelles. The land bridges thus formed 
afforded an easy entrance into Europe for the great African 
and Asiatic mammals, and perhaps for earliest man. 

ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN EUROPE 


Geological 

Periods 

Climatic 

Stages 

Animal 

Lite 

Human 

Types 

Cultural 

Epochs 

Time 

Estimates 

Recent 


Modern 

Animals 

Modern 

Races 

Later Jron Age 

Europe, 500 b.c. 

Early Iron Age 

Europe, 

1000-500 B.C. 
Orient, 

1800-1000 B.C. 

Copper-Bronze 

Age 

V * 

Europe, 

3000-1000 B.C. 
Orient, 

4000-1500 B.C. 

Neolithic or 
New Stone Age 

Europe, 8000 b.c. 

Postglacial 

Reindeer 

Musk Sheep 

Elk 

Steppe Horse 
Wild Ox 
(Aurochs) 
European Bison 
Cave Bear 
Woolly 
Rhinoceros 
Woolly 
Mammoth 
Hippopotamus 
Elephant 
Rhinoceros 
Saber-tooth 
Tiger 

Wild Boar 

Lynx 

Lion 

Hyaena 

Cro-Magnon 

Upper Palaeo¬ 
lithic or 

Old Stone Age 

25,000 B.C. { 

Ice Age 

IV. Glacial 

Neanderthal 

Lower Palaeo¬ 
lithic or 

Old Stone Age 

50,000 B.C. 

1 

3. Interglacial 


150,000 B.C. 

III. Glacial 


Eolithic Age 

175,000 B.C. 

2. Interglacial 


375,000 b.c. 

II. Glacial 


400,000 B.C. 

1. Interglacial 



475,000 B.C. 

I. Glacial 


500,000 B.C. 


The first traces of man in Europe are associated with the 
Ice Age. During the last seventy-five years a number of human 
fossils, including both skulls and skeletons, have been found 




















































6 


Prehistory 


in caves and rock shelters, especially those of England, France, 
Belgium, and western Germany. Such fossils are believed to 
Neanderthal indicate the former existence in this part of the 
man world of two different human types. One is called 

Neanderthal man, the name being derived from the German 
valley where human relics were discovered as far back as 1856. 

About thirty 
other examples 
of this type are 
known. In ap¬ 
pearance Nean¬ 
derthal man was 
quite unlike mod¬ 
ern man, being 
only about five 
feet, three inches 
in height, thick¬ 
set, with heavy 
jaws, a receding chin, low, retreating forehead, and pronounced 
eyebrow ridges. He lived during the fourth or last glacial 
stage, along with the cave bear, cave lion, cave hyaena, and 
other animals now extinct. 

Thousands of years passed before there appeared in Europe 
another human type, called Cro-Magnon, from the name of a 
Cro-Magnon French cave where five skeletons were unearthed 
man in 1868. Cro-Magnon man, as we know from 

these and other examples, was tall, with a broad face, a prom¬ 
inent nose, slightly developed eyebrow ridges, well-developed 
chin, and a large brain. Physically, and perhaps mentally, 
he resembled modern man, though he lived during early post¬ 
glacial times, when the woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, 
bison, reindeer, and wild horse still ranged throughout western 
Europe. 

3 . The Old Stone Age 

It is not easy to visualize the condition of the earliest men. 
They were naked, fireless, homeless, without tools and weapons, 



b 


a . Skull of Neanderthal Type 

b . Skull of the Cro-Magnon Type 


The Old Stone Age 


7 


and with nothing but their human hands and brains to 
secure food and protect themselves from the wild animals 
on every side. They were savages, but more First steps in 
lowly than any now found on the earth. Alone, human prog- 
unaided, they began to invent, to make discov- ress 
eries, and so to take the first steps in human progress. 



Deposits in a Swiss Cave 


The cave of Drachenloch, near Ragatz, Switzerland, contains four layers of relic-bearing 
deposits. The layers are numbered II, III, IV, and V in the drawing. At A were hearths 
with charcoal; at B an assemblage of flat stones; and at C an altar on which the skulls of 
cave bears were piled. Stone and bone implements found in the cave testify to its occupancy 
by man at a remote epoch, tens of thousands of years ago. 


Man’s earliest tools and weapons were those that lay ready to 

his hand. A branch from a tree served as a spear; a thick 

stick in his strong arms became a club; while 

... . . . . Implements 

stones picked up at haphazard were thrown as 

missiles or used as pounders to crack nuts and crush big marrow 

bones. Eventually, man discovered that a shaped implement 

was far more serviceable than an unshaped one, and so he 

began chipping flints into rude hatchets, knives, spearheads, 

borers, and the like. Such objects are called palaeoliths (old- 

stones), and the period when they were produced is therefore 



























8 


Prehistory 


known as the Palaeolithic, or Old Stone Age. 1 It seems to 
have begun in the third interglacial stage and lasted for thou¬ 
sands upon thousands of years. 



Prehistoric Stone Implements 

x, Eolith; 2, Palaeolithic fist hatchet; 3, Neolithic ax head. 


No slight skill is required to chip a flint along one face or 
both faces, until it takes a symmetrical form. Practice makes 
improvement perfect, however, and the Palaeolithic Age for the 
of implements m ost part shows steady improvement in manufac¬ 
turing, not only stone implements, but also those of bone, 
mammoth ivory, and reindeer horn. Many different kinds of 
implements, adapted to special uses, were gradually produced. 
In addition to those just mentioned, we find awls, wedges, saws, 
drills, chisels, barbed harpoons, and even so neat a device as 
a spear-thrower. Bone and wooden handles were also devised, 
thus adding immensely to the effectiveness of tools and weapons. 

Palaeolithic man learned fire-making. Just how, we cannot 
say. Probably he struck a piece of iron pyrites with a flint 

1 Some authorities hold that an Eolithic (Dawn Stone) Age preceded the Palae¬ 
olithic. Eoliths are small, rough stones, one part shaped as if to be held in the 
hand and the other part edged or pointed as for cutting. Some may be natural 
productions, but others seem to be of human workmanship. Eoliths have been 
found as far back as the beginning of the Ice Age and even earlier in the Tertiary 
period. If man really did make them, they must be regarded as the earliest evidences 
of his life on the earth. 


9 


The Old Stone Age 

and then allowed the sparks to fall into a bed of dry leaves or 
moss. Some savages still do this, though more often they pro¬ 
duce fire by rubbing two pieces of wood together. 

The discovery of fire made it possible for man to Fire making 
cook food, instead of eating it raw, to smoke meats and thus 
preserve them indefinitely, to protect himself at night against 
animal enemies, and to make his cave home comfortable. Later, 
the use of fire enabled him to bake clay into pottery and to smelt 
the metals, but these inventions were not made in Palaeolithic 
times. 

The men of the Old Stone Age doubtless passed much of 

their time in the open, following the game from place to place, 

and, when night came on, camping out under the 

’ r™ . , M \ n ^ Habitations 

stars. They may have built huts, also. More 

commonly they took shelter under rock ledges and in caves, 
as some savages do to-day. Limestone caverns, often very 
deep and roomy, are especially numerous in western Europe, 
where they seem to have been occupied by successive generations 
for many centuries. Huge accumulations of ashes and charcoal, 
stone implements, bones of animals, and sometimes those of man 
himself cover the floor of a Palaeolithic cave to a depth of many 
feet. These objects are often found sealed up tight in stalag¬ 
mite deposits formed by lime-burdened water dropping from 
the roof. What was man’s home has thus become a museum, 
only awaiting investigation by a trained student to reveal its 
story of the past. 

Palaeolithic man at the outset must have lived on what 
nature supplied in the way of wild berries, nuts, roots, herbs, 
honey, the eggs of wild fowl, shellfish, and grubs, supp i y 
and on the small animals which he could kill by 
throwing stones and sticks. As his implements improved and 
his skill increased, he became a fisher, trapper, and hunter of 
big game. He killed and ate the woolly mammoth, European 
bison, reindeer, and especially the steppe horse, which at one 
time roamed in great herds over western Europe. The pelts 
of the slain animals were made into covers and clothing, as we 
know from the discovery of flint skin scrapers and bone needles. 


IO 


Prehistory 


Art 


Some of these cave dwellers were talented artists. They 
decorated stone and bone implements with engravings, modeled 
figures in clay, made stone and ivory statuettes, 
and covered the walls of their caves with a variety 
of paintings in red, yellow, brown, and other vivid colors. The 
subjects are generally animals, though a few representations of 

the human form have also been 
found. The best Palaeolithic pic¬ 
tures are remarkably lifelike, far 
surpassing the efforts of modern 
savages. The men who made them 
were evidently close observers of 
animal life. 

The cave dwellers apparently had 
a rude form of religion. Bodies 
buried in caves were sometimes 
surrounded by offerings of food, 
implements, and or- 

Reli gi° n 

naments, which must 
have been intended for the use of 
the deceased. Such care for the 
dead indicates a belief in the soul 
and in its survival after death. 

There are other aspects of the 
Palaeolithic Age about which little 
or nothing can be learned with 
certainty. We can only surmise, from what is known of present- 
s i iif day savages, that even at this remote period people 
had begun to cooperate in hunting and for de¬ 
fense against animal and human foes. Each group must have 
been small—a few hundred individuals at the most—for popula¬ 
tion was scanty. Government doubtless existed, but whether by 
chiefs or by the elders of the little community we cannot say. 
Probably the family had also appeared, and men and women 
were beginning to live together more or less permanently under 
some form of marriage. The social life of man is very ancient, 
as well as his religion, art, and material culture. 



Palaeolithic Sculpture 

A reindeer antler with two of its tines 
carved in the form of horses’ heads, 
and a third head carved in relief. From 
the cavern of Mas d’Azil, France. 


II 


The New Stone Age 

4 . The New Stone Age 

The Neolithic or New Stone Age, when men began to grind 
and polish some of their stone implements after chipping them, 
began in Europe about ten thousand years ago. Europe in 
The map of Europe in this period presented nearly Neolithic 
the same outlines as to-day. Great Britain and times 
Ireland were now separated from the Continent by the shallow 
waters of the North Sea, English Channel, and Irish Sea. Owing 
to the sinking of the Mediterranean 
area, Spain and Italy were no longer 
joined to North Africa by land 
bridges. The plants which flour¬ 
ished in colder Palaeolithic times 
gave place to those characteristic 
of a temperate climate, and vast 
forests began to cover what had 
formerly been treeless steppes. 

The woolly rhinoceros, woolly 
mammoth, and cave bear became 
extinct; the musk sheep and rein¬ 
deer retreated to Arctic latitudes, 
while the hippopotamus, elephant, 
and other big mammals found 
their way to tropical zones. The 
animals associated with Neolithic 
men represented species familiar to us, except for some sur¬ 
vivals, such as the elk, wild boar, and European bison. 

We do not yet know what became of Palaeolithic men. They 
may have become extinct; they may have followed the retreat¬ 
ing ice sheet and the retreating reindeer toward the Neolithic 
northeast into Siberia and Arctic America; or they P e °P les 
may have remained in their old locations and intermingled with 
the invading Neolithic peoples. These newcomers apparently 
came from western Asia and northern Africa, and gradually 
spread over all Europe. The Neolithic peoples belonged to 
the White Race. Their blood flows in the veins of modern 
Europeans, who are chiefly their descendants. 



The Oldest-Known Repre¬ 
sentation oe the Human 
Face 


Made from a part of a mammoth’s 
thigh bone. Discovered in 1925 at 
Predmost in Moravia. 


1 


12 


Prehistory 



Our knowledge of the Neolithic Age comes, not from deep- 
lying or sealed-up deposits, such as those in Palaeolithic caves, but 
Neolithic from remains found on or near the surface of the 
remains soil or [ n ru bbish heaps and burial places. Along 
the Baltic coast stretch huge mounds of bones and shells, mark¬ 
ing the sites of former camping places. These “kitchen mid- 


A Swiss Lake Dwelling (Reconstruction?) 

dens,” to give them their Danish name, are sometimes a thou¬ 
sand feet long, two to three hundred feet wide, and ten feet 
high. Implements of stone, bone, and wood, together with 
pieces of pottery and other things of human workmanship, are 
found in the “kitchen middens.” Switzerland affords numerous 
remains of lake dwellers, who, for protection against their 
enemies, lived over the water in huts resting on sharpened piles 
driven into the bottom of the lake. The huts have disappeared, 
but the mud about the piles contains thousands of objects, 
including animal bones, seeds of various plants and fruits, 
implements, shreds of coarse cloth, fragments of pottery, 
household utensils, and bits of furniture. Neolithic men also 
erected many stone monuments, either single pillars or groups 
of pillars inclosing chambers and circles. The former often 





a tomb, or group of tombs, of prehistoric chieftains. 


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The New Stone Age 


i3 


marked a grave; the latter usually served as sepulchers for the 
dead. They are rude memorials of far-off times and vanished 
peoples. 

The Neolithic Age covered only a brief space of time, as 
compared with its predecessor, but it was an age of rapid advance. 

Neolithic implements, though still of 
stone, bone, and wood, Further steps 
were often of exceeding in human 
beauty and finish, partic- P rogress 
ularly arrowheads (testifying to the 
invention of the bow), and stone axes 
with a sharp cutting edge. The men 
of the “kitchen middens” began to 
make pottery, chiefly for cooking ves¬ 
sels, and they domesticated the dog. 
The lake dwellers possessed cattle, 
goats, sheep, and swine, as well as 
dogs, plaited baskets, spun and wove 
textiles, prepared leather, built boats, 
used wheeled carts, and, most im¬ 
portant of all, cultivated some of the 
cereals, including wheat, barley, and 
represents a goddess, ft stows millet. The new sources of food 

the eyes as holes, a wide necklace, available enabled Neolithic peoples to 
and tour horizontal lines on each # 

side of the face, possibly tattoo- abandon the migratory life of hunters 

markings. The mouth is not and to settle in permanent villages, 
indicated. The idol dates from # 0 

Neolithic times. Their community life must have been 

well organized, for the erection of lake 
dwellings and stone monuments required the cooperation of 
many, individuals. In short, Neolithic peoples were not sav¬ 
ages ; they had passed from savagery to barbarism. 

The Neolithic Age was not confined to Europe. It also 
existed in western Asia, in Egypt, in North Africa, Transition to 
and on the islands of Cyprus and Crete. The en- the use of 
tire basin of the Mediterranean formed a Neo- metals 
lithic center. Here the transition to the use of metals first oc¬ 
curred. 



Carved Pillar 

This pillar of sandstone, at 
Saint-Sernin in France, probably 







14 


Prehistory 


The metals 


Copper 


5. The Age of Metals 

Civilization rests on the metals. Stone is not pliable; it 
is very apt to split in use; and it is ground and polished only 
with great difficulty. In time men began to seek 
substitutes in the softer and more easily worked 
metals — gold, silver, tin, and copper. These are often found 
in a pure state and not as ores, so that they can be readily ex¬ 
tracted and worked cold. The American Indians in this way 
got pure copper from mines near Lake Superior and made metal 
spearheads, knives, and hatchets, which were modeled on stone 
implements. Other barbarous peoples have done the same 
thing. In fact, hammering the metals generally preceded 
smelting them. 

The Egyptians seem to have been the first people to smelt 
metals. Some of the most ancient graves in Egypt, dating from 
about 4000 b.c., contain needles and chisels made 
by smelting the crude copper ore found in the Nile 
Valley. The Egyptians at a very early period began to work 
the copper mines on the peninsula of Sinai. The Babylonians 
probably obtained copper from the same region. Another 
source of copper was the island of Cyprus, which is rich in that 
metal. Copper implements gradually spread into Europe, and 
with their use the Neolithic Age gave way to the Age of Metals. 

Copper implements were soft and would not keep an edge. 
Some ancient smith, more ingenious than his fellows, discovered 
that the addition of a small quantity of tin to the 
copper produced the much harder and tougher 
alloy called bronze. Where this simple but most important 
discovery took place, we cannot say. Bronze made its ap¬ 
pearance in Egypt at least as early as 3000 b.c. and some¬ 
what later in Cyprus, Crete, Asia Minor, and the coasts of 
Greece. Traders subsequently carried the new metal through¬ 
out the length and breadth of Europe. 

The great durability and hardness of iron must have been 
soon noticed by metal workers, but, as compared with copper 
and tin, it was difficult both to mine and to smelt. Hence the 
introduction of iron occurred at quite a late period, and in some 


Bronze 


Dawn of Civilization 


15 


countries after the dawn of history. The Egyptians seem to 
have made little use of iron before 1500 b.c. They called it the 
“metal of heaven,” as if they obtained it from me¬ 
teorites. In the first five books of the Bible iron is 
mentioned only thirteen times, though copper and bronze 
are referred to forty-four times. In the Homeric poems of 
the ancient Greeks we find iron considered so valuable that a 
lump of it is one of the chief prizes at athletic games. Western 
and northern Europe became acquainted with iron only in 
the last thousand years before Christ. 

The superior qualities of iron have secured for it the chief place 
among the metals. Nevertheless, peoples without any knowl¬ 
edge of iron are met with in remote parts of the Diffusion of 
world. The Australian tribes, for instance, con- iron 
tinue to make stone implements as rude as those of Palaeolithic 
man in Europe. The South Sea Islands, owing to their peculiar 
formation, produce no metals. Their inhabitants, when dis¬ 
covered a few centuries ago, were still in the Stone Age, and so 
ignorant of metal that they planted the first iron nails obtained 
from Europeans, in the hope of raising a new crop. Among the 
Malays and the African negroes the knowledge and use of iron 
also followed immediately upon the Stone Age. The American 
Indians, before the discovery of the New World, knew nothing 
of iron. Most of them used stone implements like those of 
Neolithic Europe, together with unsmelted copper, gold, and 
silver. In Mexico and Peru, however, smelted copper and 
bronze were also known. India, Indo-China, and China afford 
evidence of the regular succession in those regions of the use 
of copper, bronze, and iron. 

6. Dawn of Civilization 

Civilization, resting on the metals, thus arose only a few 
thousand years ago in certain isolated areas. Those Centers of 
in the Old World were principally Egypt, Baby- early civiliza- 
lonia (the Tigris-Euphrates Valley), northern tlon 
India, and central China. 1 Those in the New World — at a 

1 See the map on page 16. 

































































































































































Dawn of Civilization 


I? 


much later date — were Mexico, Central America, and Peru. 
The areas mentioned have certain features in common. They 
are, or wer%-fertile regions, where food could be easily pro¬ 
duced, wealth multiplied, and large populations supported by 
agriculture and trade. They are, or were, regions with a favor¬ 
able climate, where excessive cold did not stunt body and mind 
or excessive heat sap human energies. Some of them were also 
well-protected regions, surrounded by mountains or deserts, so 
that access to them by ruder peoples was not easy. Their in¬ 
habitants, accordingly, enjoyed opportunities not found else¬ 
where to develop the arts of civilized life. 

Civilization has spread from its original centers until it now 
covers the greater part of the habitable globe. Uncivilized 
peoples, who once occupied all the world, have Spread of 
been exterminated or else have been pushed off to early civiiiza- 
remote regions such as the interior of Australia, tl0n 
equatorial Africa, northern Siberia, tropical South America, and 
the islands of the Pacific. History, from the widest point of 
view, forms a record of the displacement of savagery and bar¬ 
barism by civilization. 

History begins in different countries at different dates. The 
annals of Egypt go back more than three thousand years before 
Christ, and those of Babylonia are scarcely less Beginnings of 
ancient. Trustworthy records in China and India hi stor y 
do not extend beyond 1000 b.c., while those of Greece and Rome 
are still later by several centuries. It was only after the opening 
of the Christian era that most parts of Europe entered the his¬ 
toric age. And it was not until the time of Columbus that 
the New World came into the light of history. 

The whole historic age may be conveniently divided into 
three periods. Ancient history begins with Oriental peoples, 
who were the first to develop the arts of civi- Subdivisions 
lization, deals next with the Greeks, and ends of history 
with the Romans, who built up an empire embracing much of 
the civilized world. Medieval history is chiefly concerned with 
the peoples of eastern and western Europe. It includes a period 
of about a thousand years from the break-up of the Roman 


i8 


Prehistory 


Empire at the end of the fifth century to the close of the fifteenth 
century. Modern history covers the last four hundred years 
and now embraces almost all mankind. It is no longer a his¬ 
tory of Asia or of Europe, but of the world. 

Studies 

i. Why has history been called the “biography of a society”? 2. Dis¬ 
tinguish between the three stages of savagery, barbarism, and civilization, 
and give instances of existing peoples in each stage. 3. Study the table 
“Antiquity of Man in Europe” (page 5) and trace the sequences there 
shown (geological periods, climatic stages, etc.). 4. Explain the terms 
Eolithic, Palaeolithic, and Neolithic. 5. What is meant by calling man the 
“tool-making animal”? 6. What stone implements have you ever seen? 
Who made them? Where were they? 7. Why should the discovery 
and use of fire be regarded as more significant than the discovery and use 
of steam ? 8. Why has the invention of the bow-and-arrow been of greater 
importance than the invention of gunpowder ? 9. How does the presence 

of few tameable animals in the New World help to account for its tardier 
development as compared with the Old World? 10. “The history of 
metals in the hand of man is equivalent to the history of his higher culture.” 
Comment on this statement. n. Enumerate the most important contri¬ 
butions to civilization made in prehistoric times. 12. On the map (page 16) 
distinguish the original centers of civilization from the derivative centers. 
13. In what sense is it true that all dividing lines in history are arbitrary 
and artificial? 14. Explain the abbreviations b.c. and a.d. In what 
century was the year 1928 b.c.? the year 1928 a.d.? . 


CHAPTER II 


THE WORLDS PEOPLES 
7. Races of Man 

The population of the earth is considerably in excess of one 
and a half billion. Asia has perhaps 850,000,000 inhabitants; 
Europe, 450,000,000; America, 200,000,000; and Meaning of 
Africa, 150,000,000. As everybody knows, this “race” 
huge population falls into more or less distinct groups having 
certain inherited traits of both body and mind. Such a group 
is a “race,” which corresponds to “breed” in the case of the 
lower animals. 

Were these groups, these races, originally one or many? 
Have they sprung from a single stock or from several stocks? 
The answer now given by scientists is that the origin of race 
grand divisions of humanity are really blood rela- traits 
tions, with a common, though remote, ancestry. The special 
traits of each race seem to represent what differences of climate, 
soil, diet, and other physical conditions have done to make 
men unlike in various parts of the world. 

The development of races doubtless occurred very early, for 
they appear at the dawn of history. As far as we can tell, 
they have changed little or not at all since then. Fixity of race 
Five or six thousand years ago they were as strongly traits 
marked as now, judging from pictures on old monuments, 
the examination of ancient skulls, and the earliest written de¬ 
scriptions that have come down to us. 

Racial distinctions are based on physical traits, especially 
skin color (black-brown, yellow-reddish, white), classification 
head form (narrow, broad, medium), and texture of races 
of the hair (woolly, straight, wavy or curly). Negroes, for 

19 


20 


The World’s Peoples 


example, have long, narrow heads and crisp, woolly hair, while 
Chinese and Japanese, in addition to yellow skins, have short, 
broad heads and straight, lank hair. Less important racial 
distinctions are found in the shape of the nose as thin and 
prominent or large and flat, in the orbit of the eyes as horizontal 
or oblique (compare the “almond” eyes of Orientals), and in the 
extent to which the upper and lower jaws project beyond the 
line of the face. By comparing these and other physical traits 
it becomes possible to recognize three primary races, which 
together account for at least nine-tenths of all the tribes and 
nations of the world and for more than nine-tenths of the world’s 
population. The three races are generally called Negroid, 
Mongoloid, and Caucausian, though the color terms, Black, 
Yellow, and White are also used as convenient, though not very 
accurate, labels for them. 

When history opens, each of the races occupied quite distinct 
geographical areas. The Negroid Race held most of Africa 
Distribution south of the Sahara, southern India, New Guinea 
of races and the adjacent islands, and Australia. 1 The 
Mongoloid Race held the north, east, and center of Asia, 
whence it spread over the Malay Archipelago, the islands of the 
Pacific, and the New World. 2 The Caucasian Race was limited 
to Europe, northern Africa, and southwestern Asia. The last 
four centuries have seen a wonderful expansion of Caucasian 
peoples, who now form the bulk of the inhabitants of North 
America, South America, Australia, New Zealand, and part of 
southern Africa. 

Excepting the American negroes, the Negroid Race is still 
in the savage or in the barbarian stage of culture. The same 
The White holds true of the Mongoloid Race, with the im- 
Race portant exceptions of the Chinese, Indo-Chinese, 

and Japanese. Civilization has been developed and history 
has been made chiefly by Caucasian peoples. 

1 The Dravidians of India, the Papuans of New Guinea, and the Australian 
aborigines are included among Negroid (Negro-like) peoples. 

2 The Malays, Polynesians, and American Indians are included among Mongoloid 
peoples. 









































































% 


Races of Man 


21 


CLASSIFICATION OF MANKIND 


Races 

Peoples 

Languages 

Negroid 

(Black) 

1. Negroes proper 

2. Bantu Negroes 

3- Dwarf Negroes or Pygmies 

4. Hottentots and Bushmen 

5. Dravidians (India) and Veddas 

(Ceylon) 

6. Papuans (in New Guinea and the 

Melanesian Islands) 

7. Australians 


Mongoloid 

(Yellow) 

1. Mongolians proper (Chinese, 

Japanese, Koreans, Burmans, 
Siamese, Manchus, Mongols, 
Tatars, Tibetans, Siberian 
tribes, Turks, Bulgarians, 
Magyars or Hungarians, Es- 
thonians, Finns, Lapps) 

2. Malays (in Formosa, the Philip¬ 

pines, Malay Archipelago, Nic¬ 
obar Islands, Madagascar) 

3. American Indians 

4. Polynesians (Maori of New Zea¬ 

land, Tongans, Samoans, Ha¬ 
waiian s, etc.) 


Caucasian 

(White) 


1. Hamitic (Libyans, Egyptians, 

Eastern Hamites) 

2. Semitic (Babylonians, Assyrians, 

Phoenicians, Hebrews, Ara¬ 
maeans, Arabs, Abyssinians) 

3. Indo-European 

a. Asiatic (Aryans, Medes and 

Persians, Hittites, Arme¬ 
nians, Scythians) 

b. Graeco-Latin (Albanians, 

Greeks, Italians, Spaniards, 
Portuguese, French, Wal¬ 
loons, Rumanians) 

c. Celtic (Bretons, Welsh, Irish, 

Highland Scots) 

d. Teutonic (Germans, Frisians, 

Dutch, Flemings, Danes, 
Norwegians, Swedes, Eng¬ 
lish, Lowland Scots) 

e. Lettic (Letts, Lithuanians) 

/. Slavic 

South Slavs (Serbians, Mon¬ 
tenegrins, Croatians, 

Slovenians) 

West Slavs (Czechs, Slovaks, 
Poles) 

East Slavs (Great Russians, 
Little Russians or Ruthe- 
nians, White Russians) 


Modern science tends to stress the resemblances, rather than 
the differences, between the races. Man is now recognized as 
essentially one in natural endowment. The physical traits sep- 























22 


The World’s Peoples 


arating the races may be numerous, but they do not seem to 
go deep. So with mental traits. A close parallelism certainly 

exists between the languages, religions, supersti- 
Unity of man . ^ n , . . ’ , 

tions, arts, and sciences of all mankind. Such evi¬ 
dence as we have indicates, therefore, that the races are by nature 
equal in intelligence, in morality, and perhaps even in capacity 
for social progress. Such actual inferiority as may exist is ex¬ 
plained as due to the influence of an unfavorable habitat (as 
in the case of African negroes) or to isolation (as in the case of 
Polynesians and American Indians). As far as Oriental peoples 
are concerned, we shall see that some of them produced an ad¬ 
vanced civilization, which still has much to offer in the way of 
reflective thought, artistic expression, and other aspects of 
human culture. 


8. Human Migrations 

If man is essentially one, he cannot have had more than one 
place of origin. He must have had a single cradle-land from 
The human which he subsequently made his slow way over the 
cradle-land globe. We may never discover its exact where¬ 
abouts, though almost certainly it was in the Old World, and 
quite probably in Asia. The vast size, widely varying life 
conditions, and central position of Asia all suggest that this 
continent was the birthplace of humanity. The accompanying 
map shows the location of Asia in respect to the other land 
masses and indicates the possible migration routes of early man. 
His movements from the common Asiatic home doubtless began 
even before the Ice Age and did not end until after that age 
had completely passed away. 

Man’s tendency to roam was the result of his constant quest 
for food, his desire for a more genial climate, his love of con- 
Dispersal of quest and plunder, and sometimes the pressure 
mankind exerted by foes about him. Mere restlessness and 
longing for a change of scene must also have driven him for¬ 
ward, as is still the case with the vagabond Gypsies and the 
wandering tribes of the Asiatic steppes and the Sahara. Such 
migratory movements have been possible because of man’s abil- 


Human Migrations 


23 


ity to adapt himself to varied surroundings. No region is too 
hot or too cold or too high or too low for him, provided it 
offers the necessary subsistence. He inhabits the whole earth 
from the icy plateau of Greenland to the torrid zone between 
the Tropic of Cancer and the Equator. He is found in regions 



below sea level (Caspian basin), as well as on tablelands elevated 
as much as fifteen thousand feet above the sea (Tibet). Man’s 
powers of locomotion are equally surprising, for his steady and 
tireless gait will in the end leave every animal competitor behind. 
In short; man was well fitted to obey the Scriptural command¬ 
ment : “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and 
subdue it.” 1 


1 Genesis, i, 28. 












24 


The World’s Peoples 


Man has been migrating for thousands of years. Human 
remains unearthed at Palaeolithic and Neolithic sites in Europe 
Prehistoric belong to several physical types, testifying to the 
migrations f ac t that even at this distant epoch Europe was 
occupied by more than one people (§§ 2, 4). Other parts of 
the world have also witnessed extensive migratory movements. 
The Polynesians started out from the coast of southeastern 
Asia and passed from one Pacific island to another over an un¬ 
charted ocean. Our Indians, whose ancestors probably entered 
America from Asia, crossing over at Bering Strait, spread east¬ 
ward and southward until they reached the extremity of South 
America. These and other migrations were made by early man 
while at a low cultural level, before he possessed metal tools and 
weapons to overcome the obstacles offered by seas, deserts, 
rivers, and mountain ranges, as well as by the wild beasts that 
disputed his advance. 

History tells of repeated invasions, conquests, and displace¬ 
ments of one people by another. We know that in Britain 
Historic Romans crowded upon Celts and that both had to 
migrations give wa y before Anglo-Saxons, Danes, and Nor¬ 
mans. On the Continent the inroads of Teutons and Slavs were 
followed by those of Huns, Arabs, Mongols, and Turks, who 
came from Asia during the Middle Ages. Still another example 
of extensive migration is offered by the Northmen, or Vikings, 
who dotted Iceland and southern Greenland with their settle¬ 
ments. The colonization of America by Europeans seeking 
overseas the wealth, adventure, and freedom which they could 
not find at home is the most significant migratory movement in 
history. 

Migrations, long continued and extending over great areas, 
have necessarily led to contacts between races and peoples and 
Mixture of sometimes to racial fusion or mixture. Europe has 
races and for hundreds of years been a meeting place of peo- 

peopies pies, the result that the population of Italy, 
Spain, France, England, and other countries exhibits diverse 
strains. The United States furnishes another example. Here a 
population mostly English in origin has received within the past 


Languages of Man 


25 


century many millions of emigrants from Continental Europe, 
so that the American type promises to be more or less unlike 
what it was during the Colonial era. Latin America, without 
a color line or color problem, where neither custom nor law 
raises any barriers to the free intermingling of races, shows us 
all sorts of hybrid stocks, formed by the mixture of Indians, 
Africans, and Europeans. There may arise in this part of the 
world a new division or subdivision of mankind. 

9. Languages of Man 

The contact of races and peoples, whether or not producing 
mixture between them, often results in the substitution of one 
language for another. The negroes in the United R aC e and 
States now speak English, while those in Latin language 
America speak either Spanish or Portuguese. Arabic is now the 
speech of Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and North Africa, where in 
former times there were many different languages. Latin, 
carried by the Romans, displaced the earlier languages of Italy ? 
Spain, and Gaul. Such Mongoloid peoples as the Bulgarians, 
Esthonians, and Finns, who settled in Europe during the Middle 
Ages, have exchanged their Asiatic speech for that of Europeans. 
In short, men may adopt a foreign language and pass it on to 
their children as they may adopt a foreign religion or custom. 
Race and language are therefore not convertible terms. 

The languages spoken by Caucasians belong, with some excep¬ 
tions, to one or other of three families. Least important, 
historically, is the Hamitic family, named after Hamitic 
Ham, a son of Noah ( Genesis , x, 1, 6). Hamitic languages 
languages are still found in northern and eastern Africa, some 
of them among peoples who have more or less mixed with negroes. 
Ancient Egyptian was a Hamitic language. 

The second family is that of the Semitic languages, so called 
from Shem, another son of Noah (Genesis , x, 1, 22). Semitic¬ 
speaking peoples in antiquity included Baby- Semitic 
lonians, Assyrians, Hebrews, Phoenicians, and languages 
Arabs. To these must be added the Abyssinians of eastern 
Africa. The Semites, as the map shows, originally formed a 


26 


The World’s Peoples 


compact group, but Arabs are now everywhere in northern 
Africa, while Hebrews (Jews) have spread all over the world. 

The third family is that of the Indo-European languages. 
This name indicates that they are found in both India and 
Europe. The peoples using Indo-European languages in an¬ 
tiquity formed a widely extended group, which reached from 
India across Asia and Europe to the British Isles and Scandi- 
indo- navia. Aryans in India, Medes and Persians 

European on the plateau of Iran, Greeks and Italians, and 
languages the inhabitants of eastern and western Europe 
spoke related tongues. Their likeness is illustrated by the 
common words for relationship. Terms such as “father,” 
“mother,” “brother,” and “daughter” occur with slight 
changes in form in nearly all the Indo-European languages. 
Thus, “father” in Sanskrit (the old Aryan language of India) is 
pitar , in ancient Persian, pidar, in Greek, pater , in Latin, pater, 
and in German, Voter. There must have been at one time a 
single speech from which all the Indo-European languages have 
descended. They are spoken to-day by about a third of 
humanity. 

10. Writing and the Alphabet 

The drawings and paintings made in the Palaeolithic Age were 
simple representations of objects. Man did not remain satisfied 
Picture with them. He wanted to record thoughts and 

writing actions, and so his pictures tended to become sym¬ 

bols of ideas. The figure of an arrow might be used to indicate 
the idea of an “enemy,” and two arrows directed against each 
other, the idea of a “fight.” Many savage and barbarous 
peoples still have this symbolic picture writing. The American 
Indians wrote on rolls of birch bark and on skins of animals, 
thus preserving stories, songs, and even tribal annals. 

A new stage in the development of writing was reached when 
the picture represented not an actual object or an idea, but 
Sound writ- a sound of the human voice. This difficult but ail¬ 
ing; the rebus important step appears to have been taken by 
means of the rebus. It is a way of expressing words by pic- 


Writing and the Alphabet 


27 


tures of objects whose names resemble those words or the* 
syllables in them. What makes the rebus possible is the fact 
that every language contains words having the same sound but 
different meanings. The Aztecs of Mexico, before the Spanish 
conquest, had gone so far as to write names of persons and 
places by means of the rebus. They represented the proper 
name, Itzcoatl, by the picture of a snake ( coatl ), with a number 
of knives (itz) projecting from its back. The Egyptian words for 
“sun” and “goose” were so nearly alike that the royal title, 


Song (an ear 
and a bird) 


Sun Moon Mountain Tall and 


Light 




M ^ * 'l MM 


Chinese Picture Writing and Later Conventional Characters 

It is possible in some cases to recognize the original pictures out of which Chinese writing 
developed. Thus the sun, originally a large circle with a dot in the center, became a crossed 
oblong, which the painter found easier to make with his brush. Chinese is the only living 
language in which such pictures have survived and still denote what they denoted in the 
beginning. 


“Son of the Sun,” could be suggested by grouping the pictures 
of the sun and a goose. Rebus making is still a common amuse¬ 
ment among children, but to early man it was a serious occu¬ 
pation. 

In the simplest form of sound writing each separate picture 
or symbol stands for the sound of an entire word; hence there 
must be as many signs as there are words in the Words 
language. This is the case with Chinese writing. 

A dictionary of Chinese contains approximately twenty-five 
thousand words in good usage, every one represented by a 
separate written sign. No student ever learns them all, of 
course. It is enough for ordinary purposes to be familiar with 
about three thousand signs. The mastery of even this number 
is so laborious a process that reading and writing have never 
been popularized in China. 

A more developed form of sound writing arises when signs 
are employed for the sounds of separate syllables. All the 


28 


The World’s Peoples 


"words of a language may then be written with comparatively few 
signs. The Babylonians and Assyrians possessed in their cune¬ 
iform 1 writing signs for between four and five 
hundred syllables. Recent discoveries in Crete 
indicate that the ancient inhabitants of that island had a some¬ 
what similar system. The Japanese found it possible to express 
all the sounds in their language by forty-seven syllables, one 
standing for ro, another for fa , and so forth. The signs for 
these syllables were taken from Chinese writing. 




9 ^ 


9 


Ilf 


I <3 

AAAAAA 




III ^ 




4 ^ 


SI 


% 




& .V 


* 




d dl dTT tfST-sdT Bn 




Egyptian and Babylonian Writing 


Below the pictured hieroglyphs in the first line is the same text in a simpler writing known 
as hieratic. The two systems, however, were not distinct; they were as identical as our own 
printed and written characters. The third line illustrates old Babylonian cuneiform, in which 
the characters, like the hieroglyphs, are rude and broken-down pictures of objects. Derived 
from them is the later cuneiform shown in lines four and five. 

The final stage in the development of writing is reached 
when the separate sounds of the human voice are analyzed 

Letters so ^ ar ^ a t eac ^ can represented by a single 

letter. The Egyptians early made an alphabet. 
Unfortunately, they never abandoned their older methods of 
writing and relied upon alphabetic signs alone. Egyptian 
hieroglyphs , 2 in consequence, are a curious jumble of object- 
pictures, symbols of ideas, and signs for entire words, separate 

1 Latin cuneus, “wedge.” 

2 From the Greek words hieros, “holy,” and glyphein, “to carve.” The Egyp¬ 
tians regarded their signs as sacred. 

































Distribution of the White Race in Antiquity, about 1000-500 b.c. 





































































Writing and the Alphabet 29 

syllables, and letters. The writing is a museum of all the steps 
in the progress of writing from the picture to the letter. 

As early, perhaps, as the tenth century b.c., the Phoenicians 
of western Asia were in possession of an alphabet. It con¬ 
sisted of twenty-two letters, each representing a Phoenician 
consonant. The Phoenicians seem to have alphabet 
borrowed their alphabetic signs, but whether from the Egyp¬ 
tians or the Cretans, or even in part from the Babylonians, 
remains uncertain. The Greeks, according to their own tradi- 


HEBREW 

NAMES 

GREEK 

NAMES 

HEBREW 

PHCENICIAN 

WEST 

GREEK 

EARLY 

LATIN 

LATER 

LATIN 

ALE PH 

ALPHA 


< 

A 

AA 

A 

BETH 

BETA 

3 

9 

B 

[*] 

B 

GIMEL 

GAMMA 


1 

PC 

c 

C 

DALETH 

DELTA 


A 

AOD 

£> 

D 

HE 

EPSILON 

n 


0 E 


LU 


Characters of the Alphabet 


tions, imported the alphabet from Phoenicia and added signs 
for vowels. The Greek form of the Phoenician alphabet after¬ 
ward spread to Italy, where the Romans received it, modified 
some of the letters, and then passed it on to the peoples of 
western Europe. From them it has reached us . 1 

Two methods of writing developed in the ancient Orient. 
The Egyptians traced their hieroglyphic characters with a pen 
and a dark pigment upon papyrus. This river Methods of 
reed grew plentifully in the Nile marshes. The wnting 
stem was split into thin strips which were laid at right angles, 
pasted together, pressed, and dried, thus forming a sheet. 

1 Our word “alphabet” comes from the names of the first two letters of the 
Greek alphabet — alpha (a) and beta ( b ). 










30 


The World’s Peoples 


From papyros, the Greek name of the plant, has come our 
word “paper.” Similarly, the Greek biblion, a (papyrus) book, 
reappears in our word “Bible,” as well as in various words for 
“library” in European languages, such as the French bibliotheque 
and the German Bibliothek. The Babylonians impressed their 
cuneiform signs with a metal instrument on tablets of soft clay. 
The tablets were then baked hard in an oven. The Babylo¬ 
nian method of writing survived for a time in the clay tablets 
of the Cretans and various Oriental peoples and in the waxen 
tablets of the Romans. It later disappeared. The Egyptian 
method of writing still survives in the pen, ink, and paper of 
modern usage. 

As long as all information had to be handed down by word of 
mouth from one generation to the next — the method of oral 
Written tradition — a genuine history was impossible, 

records Traditional information soon became unreliable 

and often quite false, like a piece of village gossip that has been 
many times retold. Written records alone enabled men widely 
separated in space and time to share a common knowledge and 
transmit it to future ages. Men could now keep an account of 
the past which was exact, comprehensive, and ever growing 
with the growth of civilization. 

11. Counting and the Calendar 

We have seen that prehistoric men in their struggle for exist¬ 
ence acquired various useful arts. They could make implements 
Foundation of stone. They could work metals. They were 
of science a ble to distinguish different plants and to cultivate 
them for food. They were close students of animal life and 
expert hunters and fishers. They knew how to produce fire 
and preserve it, how to cook, how to fashion pottery and baskets, 
how to spin and weave, and how to build boats and houses. 
After writing came into general use all this knowledge served 
as the foundation of science. 

We can still distinguish some of the first steps in scientific 
knowledge. Counting began with calculations on one’s fingers. 


Counting and the Calendar 


3i 


Finger counting explains the origin of the decimal system. The 
first use of numeral figures may be seen in picture writing, as 
when an Indian warrior will make four vertical Systems of 
strokes to show that he has taken four scalps. notati ° n 
When writing was in its infancy, some peoples hit on the device 
of employing special marks for fives, tens, hundreds, and their 
multiples, leaving only the units to be indicated by single 
strokes. Examples are found among the Egyptians and 
Babylonians. This rather clumsy method has not yet dis¬ 
appeared, for the Roman 
numerals V, X, C, M, 
etc., are still in common 
use. The simpler “Ara¬ 
bic” numerals probably 
originated in India, where 
the Arabs found them 
and introduced them into 
Europe during the Mid¬ 
dle Ages. 

The art of reckoning has likewise a long development. Per¬ 
haps the first way was to reckon by means of small ob¬ 
jects such as pebbles, beans, or shells. Traders Methods of 
among the natives of Africa still use such rude reckoning 
counters. The next step was to place them on a counting 
board, or abacus, which was divided into columns so that in one 
column the objects represented units, the next tens, and so on. 
The Roman boy solved his problems, in arithmetic by means 
of the abacus. Chinese merchants are wonderfully expert in 
its use. The final step in the art of reckoning was to get rid of 
counters and write down the numbers in ruled columns. For 
empty columns the sign for “nothing,” or zero, was invented. 

The simplest and probably the earliest measures of length are 
those derived from various parts of the human body. Some of 
our Indian tribes employed the double arm’s Measures of 
length, the single arm’s length, the hand width, length 
and the finger width. The Aztecs of Mexico used the footstep 
and the pace or stride. Greek measures were based on the 


1=1 111111111=9 n=io niim=i 5 no = 20 
c=ioo |=iooo' 7 =io % ooo 
nnnmi = 4434 



y=K=ior>-=ioo <y*-cioxioo)=1000 

jnKT^M«TTTT= 4 434 

Ancient Egyptian and Babylonian 
Numeration 


3 2 


The World’s Peoples 


O 

OO 

OOO 

oooo 


oooo 

r—i 


D 

U = 15 


] * 5 


.O 


= 16 


OO 


OOO 


OOOO 


finger breadth, sixteen of which made the foot. The Romans 
counted one thousand paces or double steps to the mile. Old 
English standards, such as the span, the ell, and the hand, all go 

back to this method of meas¬ 
uring on the body. 

Measures of capacity seem 
to have been first obtained 
from natural objects of uni¬ 
form size. The Hebrews had 

Measures Of the hen's egg as 
capacity and their unit; the 
weight modern Malays 

employ coconuts as measures; 
the Chinese use joints of bam¬ 
boo. In nearly all systems of 
weight the smallest unit is 
some actual seed, such as the 
old English barleycorn, of 
which twenty-four made a 
pennyweight. The same nat¬ 
ural unit was familiar to the 
Greeks and Romans. Some 
of our modern standards of 
weight and capacity can be 
traced back to those of an¬ 
tiquity ; for instance, the 
pound and ounce, gallon and 
pint, come from Roman 
weights and measures. 

It is interesting to trace the 
beginnings of time reckoning 
and of that most important 
institution, the calendar. Some savage peoples distinguish the 
Calculation of passage of time only by days and nights. The 
time; the Eskimos, for example, count by so many “sleeps.” 

A longer cycle of time was found in the lunar 
month, the interval between two new moons (about twenty- 


O 


OO 


OO 


OOO 

1 J 


OOOO 


3 =* 12 



OOO 


Maya Bar and Dot Numerals 

The Mayas of Central America, the most 
civilized of Indian peoples, had an arithmetical 
system based on the number 20. A picture of 
the moon stood for this number. The com¬ 
monest sign for zero was a picture of a shell. 

























































Counting and the Calendar 


33 


nine days, twelve hours). Most primitive tribes reckon by 
“moons.” The importance of the moon for the calendars 
of the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians is shown by the fact 
that among the former the hieroglyph for “month” was repre¬ 
sented by a crescent moon, and among the latter, by the regular 
use of the sign for thirty to indicate the moon god. The names 
for moon and month were once the same in nearly all the lan¬ 
guages of European peoples. 

Twelve lunar months give us the lunar year of about three 
.hundred and fifty-four days. In order to adapt such a year to 
the different seasons, the practice arose of inserting The 
a thirteenth month from time to time. Such 
awkward calendars were used in antiquity by the Babylonians, 
Jews, and Greeks; in modern times by the Arabs and Chinese . 1 
The Egyptians were the only people in the Old World to originate 
a solar year. It consisted of twelve months, each containing 
thirty days, with five extra days at the end of the year. This 
calendar was taken over by the Romans, who added the system 
of leap years. It has since been adopted by most civilized 
countries. 

The week seems to have arisen simply as a convenient division 
of the lunar month. The very common ten-day week was 
probably suggested by the three aspects of the 
moon in the waxing crescent, the more or less 
full disk, and the waning crescent. Ten-day periods were 
familiar to peoples so distant from one another as the Maori 
(New Zealanders), the Incas (Peruvians), the Egyptians, and 
the Greeks. Weeks of eight days were used in antiquity by the 
Romans. 

The seven-day week almost certainly arose from a recognition 
of four lunar phases — new moon, first quarter, full moon, and 
last quarter. The Babylonians, at a very early The seven- 
period, divided their months into seven-day cycles, da y week 
of which the last would contain more than seven days, since 
there are more than twenty-eight days in a lunar month. As 
far as we know, the Hebrews were the first to use a seven-day 

1 The Chinese lunar calendar was abandoned for the solar calendar in 1912 A.D. 


34 


The World’s Peoples 


week which does not follow the moon’s phases, but runs without 
interruption through the months and the years. The week of 
seven days, named after the sun, moon, and five planets, was 
familiar to the Romans as early as the first century a.d. It 
has since spread to every civilized land. 


12. Man and Culture 

The historian, it has been said, deals with civilized peoples, 
in certain definite regions, and during the comparatively brief 
period that has elapsed since written records began 
to be kept. Nevertheless, one who is writing a 
history of mankind must often widen his viewpoint to include 
uncivilized or partially civilized peoples. They, too, have made 
some advance in knowledge, arts, morals, and religion, as did 
Palaeolithic and Neolithic men in Europe and other continents. 
Even savages and barbarians possess some culture , which is a 
broader, more inclusive term than civilization. 

The culture of one age is usually handed down to the next age. 
Whatever man does in the way of invention and discovery to 
Culture better his lot he passes on to those who come after 

accumulative him. There is an accumulation of culture, a sum- 
total of knowledge, which enables each generation to go further 
than the previous one and without beginning everything anew. 
Just as the children of a family profit by all that their parents 
have achieved, so the accomplishments of one generation become 
the possession of the next. Herein lies the great secret of human 
progress. 

Nothing is more familiar than the fact that an entire social 
group may speak the same language, accept the same religious 
Cultural uni- beliefs, obey the same laws relating to marriage 
formities and property, observe the same customs, follow 
the same fashions, and, in short, present many uniformities of 
thought and action. It is this state of things that permits the 
historian to ignore individuals and to describe a social group 
as a whole, by a sort of general average. The historian can do 
this on a yet larger scale, referring, for instance, to primitive 


Man and Culture 


35 


culture (savage and barbarian), to prehistoric culture, to clas¬ 
sical culture (Greek and Roman), or to the culture of the Orient 
as compared with that of the Occident. He may even contrast 
one race with another as to the cultural progress made by each. 
Such uniformities of culture are the outcome of the imitation 
of the few by the many. Most of us do not originate. We are 
satisfied to go through life adopting the ways of our neighbors 
or of our forefathers, and we often condemn and even prohibit 
departure from long-established usages. 

The culture of a social group consists of many separate 
elements. Industries, arts, languages, methods of writing, the 
alphabet, counting systems, and the calendar are cultural simi- 
all cultural elements. Some belong to a single larities 
people, others to several peoples, and still others, such as the 
use of fire and the belief in souls and spirits, to all peoples. 
How are such similarities of culture to be explained? 

No social group is so entirely isolated as to obtain nothing 
from the outside. Even a savage tribe may secure such prized 
commodities as iron, salt, or tobacco by way of Diffusion of 
gift, barter, or plunder from another tribe. For- culture 
eigners visiting the tribe or adopted into it may introduce 
novelties, and so may war captives, or slaves, or women brought 
in as wives. Again, two migrating tribes may settle in the 
same district or else one tribe may be overrun by another 
tribe: in either case there will necessarily be many oppor¬ 
tunities for intercourse between them. Civilized peoples enjoy 
still greater advantages in the way of trade, travel, and com¬ 
munication. Consider how in recent times such inventions as 
the steam engine and printing press have found their way over 
much of the globe and how rapidly the automobile and radio 
are now coming to be enjoyed by mankind at large. History, 
with the aid of archaeology 1 and anthropology, 2 can often trace 
the diffusion of culture. 

History and its two related sciences can also throw much 
light on the origin of culture. Thus, our American culture 
came, in the main, from that of the British Isles, British 

1 The science of prehistoric culture. 2 The science of primitive culture. 


3^ 


The World's Peoples 


culture from that of the Continent, European culture from 
that of Rome, Roman culture from that of Greece, and Greek 
Origin of culture from that of the Near East, above all, 

culture Egypt, Babylonia, and Palestine. The trail then 

becomes more and more obscure, taking us back to the prehistoric 
era, where at length we ose it in the mists of the remote past. 
Similarly, it may be shown that in the Far East China and 
India have been the great cultural mothers, at whose hearth 
many Oriental peoples have lighted their own fires. Our 
study of ancient, medieval, and modern history will teach us 
how true it is that the roots of the present lie deep in the past. 

Studies 

i. Distinguish between a race and a people. 2. What were the probable 
migration routes followed by early man (map on page 23)? 3. Study 

the table “Classification of Mankind” (page 21) and enumerate the princi¬ 
pal peoples belonging to the Negroid and Mongoloid races, respectively. 

4. In the classification of mankind where do the Dravidians belong? the 
Papuans? the Malays? the Polynesians? the American Indians? 

5. Give examples of peoples widely different in blood who nevertheless speak 

the same language. 6. Enumerate the principal language groups found 
among peoples of the Caucasian Race. 7. On an outline map indicate 
the areas occupied in ancient times by Semitic and Indo-European peoples. 
8. Is Chinese writing verbal, syllabic, or alphabetic? Was Egyptian 
writing one of these three exclusively? 9. What were the cuneiform 
signs ? What were the hieroglyphs ? 10. How did the ‘ ‘ Arabic ’ ’ numerals 

get their name? n. Explain the difference between a lunar year and a 
solar year. 12. What is the historic origin of our solar calendar ? 13. How 

did the week arise? Is the seven-day week the only known form? 
14. What is meant by oral tradition? Why does it grow more and more 
unreliable in the course of time? 15. Which is the broader term, culture 
or civilization? 16. What subjects are studied by archaeology and anthro¬ 
pology ? How do these sciences cooperate with history ? 


WORKS, BUFFALO 



140 4? 160 180 





















































































, 













































. 

. 



■ ' ■ . \ : 






>' ' Mj 




• ' , 


























t * 







































CHAPTER III 


THE FAR EAST IN ANTIQUITY 
13. Lands and Peoples of the East 

Some of the earliest geographers divided the world as known 
to them into two parts only, Europe and Asia. The former 
was the West, the land of the setting sun; the The name 
latter was the East, the land of the rising sun. By “ Asia ” 

Asia the Greeks seem at first to have meant simply western 
Asia Minor, and the Romans also gave this name to their prov¬ 
ince there. Eventually the name came to be applied to the 
entire continent . 1 

Asia comprises almost one-third of the land surface of the 
globe. Its boundaries on the north, east, and south are easily 
traced. On the west the Mediterranean and the Boundaries 
Black and Caspian seas separate it in part from of Asia 
Europe. The Caucasus range, over nine hundred miles in 
length, and from thirty to one hundred and forty miles in 
width, also serves as a western boundary. These lofty moun¬ 
tains have been very important, historically, as a barrier to 
migrations. On the other hand, the broad, low range of the 
Urals offers few obstacles to movement over them, while between 
them and the Caspian the Asiatic steppe merges insensibly 
into the European plain. Europe has thus been always open 
to the nomadic tribes of central and northern Asia. 

Asia reaches from near the equator to a point halfway between 
the Arctic Circle and the North Pole. It has, therefore, a wide 
variety of climates. Some of the highest temper- climatic con¬ 
atures known are registered in southern Asia and ditions in Asia 
som‘e of the lowest in northern Asia. The differences in altitude, 

1 Egypt, or the valley of the Nile, was also included in Asia by ancient geographers. 

37 


38 


The Far East in Antiquity 


ranging from the Caspian basin below sea-level to the table-land 
of Tibet, whose mean elevation is about fifteen thousand feet 
above the sea, also profoundly affect climatic conditions. The 
mountains of central Asia are so high that they drain the winds 
from the ocean of their moisture, with the result that the interior 
of the continent has little rainfall and is often completely arid. 

The coastline of Asia is comparatively uniform and unin¬ 
dented, offering fewer opportunities for sea-borne traffic 
Asia and than the deeply indented shores of Europe. The 
Europe com- mighty mountains of Asia present barriers to inter- 
pared course such as are not afforded by the lower ranges 

of Europe. Extensive deserts and barren table-lands, which 
form so characteristic a feature of Asia, are unknown in Europe. 
Asia, in proportion to its size, is not as well supplied as Europe 
with navigable streams. The climate of Asia is far less mild 
and equable than that of Europe. The two land masses thus 
present striking contrasts in their physical features. 

Asia contains perhaps half of the world’s population. Yet 
most of the continent is sparsely settled, for the mountain 
Population slopes, the steppes, the deserts, the forests, and the 
of Asia tundras support few inhabitants. The bulk of the 

population is found in southern and southeastern Asia, where 
agriculture, and not hunting and herding, forms the principal 
means of livelihood. 

All the races of man are found in Asia, but by far the largest 
part of the continent is occupied by the Mongoloid or Yellow 
Race. The Negroid Race is represented by the 
dwarf blacks found in the Malay Peninsula. The 
Dravidians of southern India form a large group also with 
Negroid characteristics. Northern India, the greater part of 
western Asia, and Egypt have been occupied since prehistoric 
times by members of the Caucasian or White Race. 

A physical map of Asia shows that the continent consists of 
two grand divisions, separated by an almost continuous mass of 

„ mountains and deserts. These two divisions* are 
The Far East 

the Far East and the Near East, respectively. 
The Far East begins in central Asia with a series of elevated 


Asiatic races 



160 






























































































China 


39 


table-lands, which rise into the lofty plateaus known as the 
“Roof of the World.’’ Here two tremendous mountain chains 
diverge. The Altai range, with its continuations, runs to the 
northeast and reaches the Pacific near Bering Strait. The 
Himalaya range, with its continuations, extends southeast to 
the Malay Peninsula. From these mountains and plateaus 
the ground sinks gradually toward the west and north into the 
lowlands of West (Russian) Turkestan and Siberia, and toward 
the east and south into the plains of China, Indo-China, and 
India. 


14. China 

The annals of China , 1 according to native authorities, began 
nearly five thousand years ago, but we do not reach firm his¬ 
torical ground until about 1000 b.c. The Chinese Chinese 
can therefore boast a civilization older than that civilization 
of India, older than that of Persia, Greece, or Rome, and sur¬ 
passed in age only by that of Egypt and Babylonia. Their 
civilization has lasted with little change from the dawn of his¬ 
tory to the present. What the Chinese were thirty or forty 
centuries ago, they are to-day. It owes little to .outside in¬ 
fluence, for the Far East always lacked that intimate contact 
between different cultural groups so characteristic of the Near 
East and of Europe. It has exerted and still exerts wide in¬ 
fluence. The once barbarous inhabitants of Korea, Indo-China, 
and Japan copied the arts, the literature, and even to some 
extent the religion and government of China, while many ruder 
peoples of central and eastern Asia received from China what¬ 
ever measure of civilized life they now enjoy. 

These features of, Chinese civilization find at least a partial 
explanation in geography. China, until recently, has always 
been isolated. On the east she faces the Pacific, a sea which 

1 This name is of uncertain origin, though perhaps derived from the dynastic 
name Ch'in (ancient pronunciation Ts‘in). The classical name of China was Serica, 
a word derived from Mongol sirik, “silk.” Mediaeval Europe knew China as 
“Cathay,” from the Tatar Khitans. The most common national name is “Middle 
Kingdom,” properly used only of the central part of China. 


40 


The Far East in Antiquity 


was once a barrier to intercourse, instead of, as now, a highway 
of commerce. On the west, northwest, and southwest, China is 
isolation of separated from the rest of continental Asia by 
China lofty mountain ranges. There are very few 

passes into the country from Mongolia, Tibet, or Indo-China. 
Such as exist were in former days made dangerous for trade and 



The Great Wall or China 


The wall was .begun in 214 B.c. to protect the northern frontier of China from the inroads 
of Tatar tribes, and was gradually extended until it reached a length of 1500 miles. It consists 
of two ramparts of brick, resting upon granite foundations. The space within is filled with 
stones and earth. The breadth of the wall is about 25 feet; its height is between 20 and 30 
feet. Watch towers, 40 feet high, occur every 200 yards. In places of strategic importance 
there are sometimes as many as five huge loops, with miles of country between, so that if one 
loop were captured the next might still be defended. Many parts of this colossal fortification 
are even now in good repair. 


travel by the warlike tribes infesting them. On the narrow 
northeastern frontier the transition from the Manchurian 
table-land to China is not, indeed, abrupt, but before the build¬ 
ing of railways Manchuria was itself an inaccessible region. 
The mountains bounding China are buttressed by vast plateaus 
either semi-arid or completely desert, like the Desert of Gobi, 
and arduous enough for caravan traffic. The Chinese added to 
these natural barriers the Great Wall. It starts from the sea¬ 
shore where the Manchurian and Chinese frontiers meet east 
of Peking, extends to Tibet, and for fifteen hundred miles 



China 


4i 


guards the northern and western extremities of the “ Middle 
Kingdom.” 

“China,” in the widest sense of the word, comprises Man¬ 
churia, Mongolia, East (Chinese) Turkestan, Tibet, and the 
Eighteen Provinces, the whole including over The Eighteen 
4,000,000 square miles. “China” in this sense is Provinces 
larger than the United States, Canada, or Brazil, and is sur¬ 
passed in size only by European and Asiatic Russia. The 



China, under the T‘ang dynasty (618-907 a.d.), was the largest and most powerful state in 
the world. The frontiers of the empire reached as far as Persia and the Caspian Sea on the 
west, and on the southeast to Burma and the Himalaya Mountains. 


Eighteen Provinces embrace only about one-third of the total 
area, but they possess more than nine-tenths the population and 
have always formed the real, historic China. They are China, 
properly so called. 

The Eighteen Provinces are divided into three regions by the 
basins of the Hoangho (Yellow River) in the north, the Yangtze 
in the center, and the Si in the extreme south. Ri ver 
The Hoangho has long been known as “China’s s y stems 
Sorrow,” because it changes its course so frequently and over- 









42 


The Far East in Antiquity 


flows wide tracts of country. The current of the lower part 
of the river is too swift for navigation. Ocean steamers can 
proceed up the Yangtze for a thousand miles from its mouth, 
and lighter craft for a much longer distance. The Si is also 
navigable for a considerable part of its course. These great 
rivers, with their numerous tributaries, furnish the easiest and 
least expensive means of communication and transportation. 
No country has been better endowed with waterways than 
China, and to them she owes in large measure her unity. 

China is very fertile, especially the yellow “loess” lands 
north of the Yangtze. These have largely been formed in the 
Natural course of ages by very deep deposits of soil swept 
resources j n by the winds from the steppes of central Asia. 
The loess requires little or no manuring and produces lux¬ 
uriantly when watered by plentiful rains. Wherever it is found, 
the peasant can live and thrive. Wheat, barley, millet, and 
other hardy grains form the staple crops in the northern prov¬ 
inces. Farther south tea, cotton, sugar cane, and, above all, 
rice become the principal cultivated plants. Fruit trees abound 
in China, together with bamboo, camphor, and mulberry trees. 
Forestry, however, is neglected, and timber has to be imported. 
Stock raising is not practiced to any considerable extent. 
China contains rich deposits of copper, tin, lead, and iron, 
much oil, and extensive coal fields. This mineral wealth will 
some day enable China to take a place among the great manu¬ 
facturing countries of the world. 

• It is not strange that a land so bountifully endowed by nature 
should have become the home of a numerous and gifted people. 
The Chinese The Chinese belong to the Mongoloid or Yellow 
people Race. They possess the distinctive physical traits 

of that race: a short stature, a broad head, prominent cheek 
bones, straight, black hair, and a complexion varying from pale 
yellow to dark brown. They are also characterized by the 
so-called Mongolian, or “almond” eye (§7). The pure Mongo¬ 
loid type is, however, uncommon in China, because for centuries 
Tibetans, Burmese, Manchus, and other peoples have mingled 
with the original Chinese. The earliest records of the Chinese 


Chinese Society 


43 


contain no mention of any migration into the country which they 
have occupied for thousands of years. It is probable, therefore, 
that the Chinese of history developed from the prehistoric 
inhabitants of China proper. 

The census is an old institution with the Chinese. Unfor¬ 
tunately, it is taken so carelessly as to be quite unreliable. The 
inhabitants of China proper, according to official Population 
figures, exceed 400,000,000, which would be about 
half the population of Asia and about equal to that of Europe. 
Some foreign authorities consider a more accurate estimate to 
be 325,000,000. Even this total would absorb a fifth of mankind. 

15. Chinese Society 

Society, in China, is based directly on the family. This forms 

a large group, for it includes not only father, mother, and 

children, but also grandparents, grandchildren, _ , 

Tiii The family 

uncles, aunts, cousins, and even more distant blood 
relatives. The sons marry early, usually at about the age of 
eighteen; they bring their wives into the paternal home, and 
stay there even after they have children of their own. Thus 
the family expands, until, in some districts, entire villages 
consist of an enlarged household, or clan. One of the greatest 
joys in the life of a Chinese is to have “five generations in the 
hall.” 

“Honor thy father and thy mother” has always been for 
the Chinese the first and most important commandment. They 

regard filial piety as the root out of which all .. . 

& r Filial p iet y 

other virtues grow, the cornerstone of society. 

Father and mother in China receive equal deference from their 

children during life and after death the same ancestral worship. 

The worship of ancestors is universal in China. It must 
have arisen in prehistoric times, judging from the references 
to it in the most ancient Chinese literature. An Ancestor 
ancestral soul is supposed to retain an interest in worship 
the affairs of the living family and to be able to affect them for 
good or ill. Such a soul, it is believed, resides particularly in a 
tablet kept in the family hall or living room. Offerings of food 


44 


The Far East in Antiquity 


and drink are laid before the tablet from time to time. There 
are also sacrifices every spring to the soul which dwells with 
the body in the tomb. The dead, when thus honored and 
conciliated, are believed to bestow blessings upon their descend¬ 
ants. This ritual is 
not altogether a mat¬ 
ter for cold calculation 
— giving so much in 
order to receive so 
much. The religious 
books declare that a 
good son ought to 
sacrifice to his parents 
without seeking any¬ 
thing from them in 
return. All impor¬ 
tant happenings and 
concerns of the family, 
for instance, a pro¬ 
jected journey, a busi¬ 
ness venture, or a 
marriage engagement, 
are dutifully an¬ 
nounced to the an¬ 
cestors. Their wor¬ 
ship, among the 
Chinese as among the 
ancient Greeks and 
Romans, becomes in 
this way an expression 
of filial piety, a means 
of uniting the living and the dead by the closest of religious ties. 

The Chinese are most successful farmers. They have long 
been familiar with intensive cultivation, scientific manuring, 
and rotation of crops. Irrigation is generally 
practiced, and extensive dikes are built to drain low- 
lying lands. In the more thickly populated districts terraces 



A Chinese Pagoda 


Agriculture 






Chinese Society 


45 


Land tenure 


have been carried up the sides and even to the summits of 
mountains, which are thus made to yield food for man. All 
this work goes on with incredible patience and an immense 
expenditure of human effort. 

The great majority of Chinese are peasants. Their holdings 
are very small, for custom requires that all the sons shall inherit 
substantially equal shares of the father’s estate. 

Since early marriage and large families prevail, 
there is a process of continual division and subdivision of 
lands and property. Patches of one-tenth or even one- 
twentieth of an acre are sometimes found as the possession of a 
land owner. Most holdings run between one and three acres. 
With three acres a family is considered very comfortable, and 
with ten acres to be provided for luxuriously. 

The principal manufactures of China are porcelain, silk, and 

cotton goods. The greater part of the silk spun is used in China, 

but much raw silk is exported. The spinning and 

. . . . . „ Manufactures 

weaving of cotton are carried on almost universally. 

Manufactures of “India” ink, fans, furniture, lacquer ware, 

matting, dyes, and varnished tiles are found locally, while 

paper, bricks, and earthenware are made in nearly all the 

provinces. 

Chinese merchants and artisans generally form guilds, similar 
to those of modern India, medieval Europe, and ancient Rome. 
The guilds are voluntary associations without Guilds 
governmental charter or license. They make their 
own rules and elect their own officers. Conditions of ap¬ 
prenticeship, prices, and wages are very largely regulated by 
them. Each guild endeavors to advance its own interests, keep 
its own members in order, and defend itself against outsiders. 
Each one, also, maintains a special shrine and worships a patron 
divinity. The popularity of guilds testifies to the democratic 
spirit of the Chinese and to their capacity for collective action. 

The government of China in ancient times and, indeed, 
until a few years ago was an absolute monarchy. Monarchy 
The emperor wielded supreme authority. His de¬ 
crees were the law of the land. All officials held their positions 


46 


The Far East in Antiquity 


entirely at his pleasure. No council, Cabinet, or parliament in 
any way interfered with his unlimited power. The emperor 
was not supposed to rule for personal gratification. Should he 
prove to be a tyrant, rebellion against him would be justified. 
Chinese history mentions several occasions when a bad emperor 
was compelled to resign and a new dynasty was established. 
Absolutism in China thus rested on a moral basis. It implied 
obligations and responsibilities which could not be evaded. 

The traditional Chinese social system distinguished four 
classes, namely, scholars, farmers, mechanics, and traders. 

Practically, however only the two classes of ofh- 
Social classes ~ 

cials and non-officials existed. There was no hered¬ 
itary nobility, except in the case of a few families whose ances¬ 
tors had greatly served the state, and even the possession of 
an hereditary title conferred no special privileges. 

Foreign observers of the Chinese have often called attention 
to their love of industry, peace, and social order, their patience 
under wrongs and evils beyond cure, and their generally happy 
The Chinese temperament. They are exceptionally hardwork- 
character ing, honest, sober, and self-respecting. Their char¬ 
acteristic thriftiness is well expressed in the proverb, “With 
money you may move the gods; without it you cannot move 
men.” They tend to emphasize the material side of life, being 
more interested in living comfortably, according to their 
standards, than in philosophic or religious speculation. Chinese 
morality dwells rather on man’s duty to man than on man’s 
duty to God. 


16. Chinese Culture 


The practical character of the Chinese does not interfere with 
their genuine appreciation of the beautiful. They have long 
A excelled as painters. The Chinese artist makes 
ink sketches or works m water colors. He repre¬ 
sents chiefly natural scenes, since human personality does not 
appeal to him as a subject for his brush. The sculpture of 
the Chinese except in bronze, lacks the artistic excellence of 
their painting. In architecture, also, their genius has found 


Chinese Culture 


47 


only a limited expression. The main feature of a Chinese 
building is the massive roof, sometimes in double and triple 
form, decorated with the figures of dragons and other fantastic 
animals, and often covered with brilliant glazed tiles. Char¬ 
acteristic Chinese structures are archways, often commemorat¬ 
ing distinguished persons, tall pagodas, and graceful bridges. 

The cumbersomeness of their 
written language (§10) has not 
prevented the Chinese from 
producing a literature remark¬ 
able for its antiquity and un¬ 
broken development down to 
the present day. Histories, 
biographies geog- 
raphies, and phil¬ 
osophical treatises, together 
with essays, dramas, novels, 
and poetry are all represented. 

The historical works are espe¬ 
cially noteworthy, being un¬ 
equalled in completeness by 
those of any other people, 
ancient or modern. The most 
important literature is con¬ 
tained in the so-called “Clas¬ 
sics,” which are ancient works 
edited or compiled by the 
great teacher Confucius, together with his own productions and 
those of his disciples. The “Classics” are familiar to every 
Chinese scholar. 

The Chinese have always been devoted to mechanics and 
engineering. One needs only mention their remarkable arched 
bridges and gateways, their waterwheels and other Inventions 
appliances for irrigation, and the Great Wall and 
Grand Canal. 1 In the manufacture of porcelain the Chinese 

i This Canal reaches from Hangchow in the south to Tientsin (near Peking) 
in the north, a distance of about six hundred and fifty miles. 



A stone carving in the temple of Con¬ 
fucius at K‘iu Fu. 





4 8 


The Far East in Antiquity 


have never been surpassed. The invention of the mariner’s 
compass has often been attributed to them, but more probably 
this was introduced into China by the Arabs at a comparatively 
late date. The Chinese knew of gunpowder, or something like 
it, in the seventh century a.d. ; as early as the tenth century 
a.d. they commonly printed books by taking impressions on 
paper from wooden blocks; and they used coal and gas heat¬ 
ing hundreds of years before Europeans. Wall paper, another 
Chinese invention, was introduced into Europe by Dutch 
traders, under the name of “p a g°cla paper.” The Chinese 
sometimes anticipated other modern inventions and discoveries, 
but did not give to them practical form. 

There are numerous Chinese works on mathematics, as¬ 
tronomy, medicine, agriculture, political economy, and other 
g . branches of pure and applied science. The inves¬ 

tigation of such subjects has not been carried far. 
Medical knowledge and practice are to-day about what they 
were in Europe two centuries ago. Surgery worthy of the 
name does not exist, because the Chinese object to any human 
interference with the bodies which nature has given them. 
Chinese astronomy is much mixed with the pseudo-science of 
astrology, by which men seek to read their fate in the stars. 
Popular almanacs classify all the days of the month as very 
lucky, neither lucky nor unlucky, unlucky, and very unlucky 
for various undertakings. The Chinese do not divide the 
month into weeks, nor have they ever observed a regular day 
of rest, corresponding to the Hebrew Sabbath or the Christian 
Sunday. Their numerous festivals are, however, kept as holi¬ 
days, thus providing some relaxation from the monotonous 
round of labor. 

The mass of Chinese believe in the existence of evil spirits. 
Demons, vampires, and other creations of popular fancy are 
Religious thought to populate the country as densely as its 

beliefs human inhabitants. They are supposed to cause 

disease, accidents, eclipses, and earthquakes, and by entering 
human bodies to produce insanity and other mental dis¬ 
orders. The ancient religion of China seems to have included a 


Chinese Culture 


49 


simple monotheism, side by side with the worship of ancestors. 
God was not regarded as the creator of the universe or of man, 
but as a personal Supreme Ruler (Shang Ti), who rewarded 
the good and punished the wicked. Another name for him 
was Then, or Heaven. To this deity every one, from emperor 
to peasant, offered worship. Other gods, such as sun, moon, 
stars, and earth, were in time recognized, but they were thought 
of as ministers of Heaven, the Supreme Ruler, and hence as 
inferior to him. Such ideas persist to the present day among 
the educated classes of China. 

The great sage K‘ung Futze (the “philosopher K‘ung”), 
whose name has become familiar to Westerners in its Latinized 
form Confucius, was born in what is now the Confucius, 
province of Shantung. His family, though old 551-478 b.c. 
and distinguished, lived in straitened circumstances, and Con¬ 
fucius passed his early years in poverty. Nevertheless, he 
acquired so good an education that when twenty-two years of 
age he set up as a public teacher, professing to expound the 
doctrines of antiquity. Pupils resorted to him in increasing 
numbers, and his reputation for wisdom grew apace. It was 
during this earlier period of his life that he collected and edited 
the Chinese “Classics,” with which his name has ever since 
been associated. His later years were taken up with public 
services, travels in various parts of China, and literary pursuits. 
He died at the age of seventy-three. Never fully appreciated 
in life, Confucius became, after death, the center of religious 
worship. Temples were erected to him in all the principal 
cities, and during certain months sacrifices were offered to him. 
In the popular mind he appeared as a god. 

Confucius himself had little to say about religion. He did 
not discuss the future life with his followers, considering that the 
main inducement to virtue should be well-being Confucian- 
in the present life. His attitude toward the spirit ism 
world is summed up in the utterance: “Respect the spirits, 
but keep them at a distance.” God, to Confucius, stood for 
the moral order, both in nature and in the affairs of men. In 
short, Confucianism forms a system of morality, not a religion. 


5o 


The Far East in Antiquity 


It emphasizes, particularly, the virtues of filial piety, devotion 
to ancestors, benevolence toward relatives, propriety of con¬ 
duct, and reverence for learning. Its highest expression is the 
negative form of the Golden Rule: “What you do not want 
done to yourself do not do to others.” The teachings of Con¬ 
fucius only reflected views current in China for ages before him. 
This is perhaps the reason why Confucianism has not lost its 
hold upon the popular mind. Cultivated Chinese still quote 
the classical books, and the uneducated masses still repeat the 
maxims which sum up the worldly wisdom of the philosopher. 
Confucianism thus continues to inspire the moral code of an 
entire people. 

Little is known of an older contemporary of Confucius, the 
famous Lao Tze. His philosophical views are set forth in the 
Lao Tze and Tao Teh King , which may be in part of his own 
Taoism composition. Lao Tze was a highly speculative 

thinker, who saw in nature the manifestation of a spiritual 
power. Man comes into harmony with it by “not doing” 
— by the same self-effacement and suppression of desire which 
Buddha in India found the path to salvation. Doctrines so 
obscure and mystical could never be understood by the multi¬ 
tude. Taoism consequently degenerated as it spread among 
the people. Beginning as a system of philosophy, it became 
a religion with many gods, among whom Lao Tze himself has 
a prominent place; with countless saints and protecting spirits; 
and with temples, monasteries, priests, and forms of public 
worship. Various superstitions have also found a place in the 
popular Taoism. 

Buddhism first became known to the Chinese as early as the 
third century b.c. It long found a bitter opponent in Taoism, 
Chinese but eventually the rival faiths managed to exist 

Buddhism peaceably together. Each has borrowed so much 
from the other that now only an expert can distinguish them. 
The same persons, in fact, may be followers of Buddha and 
Lao Tze, as well as of Confucius. 

Perhaps the most striking feature of Chinese civilization is its 
long, unbroken development through so many centuries. Other 


India 


5i 


civilizations, with equal and possibly superior claims to 
permanency, have completely disappeared, for instance, those 
of ancient Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, stability of 
and Rome. The stability of China may be China 
ascribed, in part, to the existence of a written language common 
to the entire country; in part, to the emphasis on ancestor 
worship and the family tie; and, in great part, to Con¬ 
fucianism, whose moral teachings unite the whole people. 
There are, of course, many other influences making for stability. 
China has always lived largely by agriculture, that most con¬ 
servative of occupations, and the system of small holdings in 
vogue from time immemorial gives to the mass of the people 
a proprietary interest in the soil. Again, the genuinely demo¬ 
cratic spirit of Chinese society, the great personal freedom that 
prevails, and the absence of caste and rigid social distinctions 
have also contributed to make the Chinese well satisfied with 
their civilization. Finally, China is so big and populous that it 
has always been able to absorb foreign invaders, such as the 
Mongols in the thirteenth century a.d. and the Manchus four 
hundred years later. “China,” as an old writer well said, 
“is a sea that salts all the rivers flowing into it.” 

17. India 

The map shows India 1 as the middle of three great peninsulas 
which reach southward from the mainland of Asia. It has the 
form of a triangle, with the base resting upon the Position> 
Himalaya Mountains and the apex projecting far shape, and 
into the Indian Ocean. Relatively to the rest of Slze 
Asia, India looks small, but the peninsula is larger than Europe 
without Russia. It extends from north to south for nearly two 
thousand miles, and its greatest breadth from east to west is 
about the same distance. The remarkable regularity of the 

1 “India,” which is now the official name of the country, comes from a Sanskrit 
word meaning a “river,” preeminently the Indus. The name “Hindustan,” mean¬ 
ing the “land of the Hindus” (compare “Afghanistan,” “Baluchistan”), though 
sometimes applied to the entire country, is properly limited to that part of northern 
India where Hindustani is the spoken language. 


52 


The Far East in Antiquity 

coastline accounts for the few good harbors of India, in spite 
of its peninsular shape. 

Besides water boundaries in the Bay of Bengal and the 
Arabian Sea, India has a land boundary to the north in the 
Natural stupendous range of the Himalayas, which extend 

boundaries f or about fifteen hundred miles. At their ex¬ 
tremities they send out offshoots which reach the sea. These 
are not continuous, but contain passes and open tracts. All 
the historic invasions of India have followed the routes from 
Persia and central Asia, while in prehistoric times large bodies 
of immigrants entered India from China. In spite of the 
mighty wall of the Himalayas, India has thus been accessible 
on both its northwestern and northeastern frontiers. 

The plain of the Indus and the Ganges was an inland sea at a 
remote geological period, before the elevation of the Himalayas. 
The Indo- As these mountains arose, the rivers draining them 
Gangetic plain fl owe d into the depression and filled it with sedi¬ 
ment — a process which still goes on. The Indo-Gangetic 
plain contains the richest and most densely populated provinces 
of India. 

The plateau covering the southern half of India is geographi¬ 
cally distinct from the Indo-Gangetic plain and the Himalayas. 
Plateau of the It forms the remnant of a continent which once 
Deccan joined Africa across the space now filled by the 

Indian Ocean. The Deccan, in general, is a broken, rocky 
region, favorable to the creation of small and independent states. 
This part of India never came completely under one government 
until the British conquest of India. 

The census of 1921 enumerated over 319,000,000 inhabitants 
of India, including Burma. The population has increased 
Racial t es ra P^y within recent decades, for under British 
rule wars have ceased and plagues and famines 
have become less terribly destructive of human life. Several 
racial types are distinguished, the most important being the 
Dravidians, who extend from Ceylon to the Ganges River, and 
the Indo-Aryans (Hindus), in the northern and northwestern 
parts of the peninsula. The former doubtless represent the 


Indian Society and Culture 53 

early inhabitants of India, while the latter have descended 
from the ancient Aryan colonists of the country. 

18 . Indian Society and Culture 

Nine-tenths of India’s population are country folk. The vil¬ 
lage community, in which most of them live, consists of peasant 
land-owners or tenants; landless men, working for The village 
wages; artisans, such as potter, blacksmith, car- community 
penter, and cobbler, who receive for their labor a certain share 
of the harvest; and various public officials. This organization of 
rural life in economically independent villages closely resembles 
what was found in medieval Europe a thousand years ago. In 
India it has survived to the present time, though it begins to pass 
away with the introduction of railways, good roads, and other 
agencies which break down rural isolation. The village com¬ 
munity and the caste system together explain much of the 
uniformity and conservatism of Indian society. 

The caste system is unique in India, nothing of the kind being 
known in any other country. The word “caste” comes from 
the Portuguese language; the usual Indian names Cagte 
for the institution are varna, “color,”- and jati, 

“birth,” or “descent.” Several thousand castes exist, headed 
by the Brahmans, or priests. The number is constantly grow¬ 
ing, as old castes divide up and new ones arise from without. 
All castes are closely connected with the native religion, and 
no Mohammedan and, of course, no Christian may belong to 
them. 

One who belongs to a caste must not marry outside it; must 
not do work of any sort unrecognized by it; and must not eat 
or drink with a person of a lower caste, or, as is Rnles of caste 
often the case, with any person of another caste. 

It is also necessary for him to observe the ceremonies customary 
among his caste-fellows in connection with birth, marriage, or 
death in his family; to abstain from food regarded by his 
associates as impure; to avoid acts considered improper, for 
instance, the marriage of widows; and, finally, not to render 
services to men of low caste. If polluted by their presence or 


54 


The Far East in Antiquity 


their mere proximity, he must purify himself as from some 
evil influence. A person who loses caste for breaking any of 
these rules becomes an outcast. 

The caste system, by dividing the people of India into innu¬ 
merable small groups, undoubtedly tends to prevent the develop- 
Influence of ment of any true national feeling among them. It 
caste is uneconomic, for it determines each person’s 

occupation and restricts his actions throughout life. It also 

seems to a Westerner 
utterly undemocratic 
and in every way op¬ 
posed to the “ brother¬ 
hood of man.” The 
conservative Indian de¬ 
fends caste, however, 
because it gives to every 
man, no matter, how 
humble, a recognized 
place in society. Were 
caste to disappear, with 
it would disappear the 
strongest force working 
in India to maintain 
the traditional moral 
and social code. 

The native religion of India is called Hinduism. 1 It presents 
very different aspects, according as it is held by the ignorant 
multitude or by the educated few. At one end 
are beliefs and practices based on primitive super¬ 
stition ; at the other end are elevated philosophical doctrines 
from which even Western thinkers have perhaps much to learn. 

Our earliest knowledge of Hinduism comes from the sacred 
books, the Vedas, which were composed in India after 1000 b.c. 
Development The Vedic deities seem to have been the forces of 
of Hinduism nature more or less vaguely personified, such as 
Father Heaven, Mother Earth, Indra, the storm or monsoon 

1 It is also known as Brahmanism, after its priests, the Brahmans. 



Hindu Conception oe the Earth 

The earth as represented by a Brahman. The abode 
of men is situated between that ol the gods above and 
the infernal regions below. The whole is supported by 
four elephants on the back of a tortoise, the symbol of 
force and creative power. The great serpent, shown at 
the bottom, is the emblem of eternity. 


Hinduism 












Indian Society and Culture 


55 


god, and Agni, god of fire. The householder honored them 
with simple prayers, hymns, and offerings. After a special class 
of religious poets and priests — the Brahmans — had arisen, 
the simple Vedic faith underwent a profound change. The 
old nature deities lost impor¬ 
tance, while Brahma, the All- 
Father, Vishnu, the Pre¬ 
server, and Siva, the De¬ 
stroyer, together with a 
crowd of other gods and 
godlings, made their appear¬ 
ance. Other aspects of Hin¬ 
duism include a belief in the 
transmigration of souls, the 
multiplication of idols and 
temples, and the reverence 
paid to various animals, 
including monkeys, serpents, 
and oxen. India contains 
many holy places, such as 
Benares, and holy rivers, 
such as the Ganges. Enor¬ 
mous numbers of pilgrims 
visit the sacred sites, thus 
providing a livelihood for 
the local Brahman priests. 

The great majority of the 
people of India are either 
Vishnuites (followers 



Seated Buddha 


A sculpture at Benares, India, dating from the 
of fifth century a.d. The figure of the Buddha is 
TT . . N . /r -n posed with an elaborately carved halo behind the 

Vishnu) or Sivaites (follow- hea d. 
ers of Siva). As Hinduism 

has no pope, church council, fixed creed, or other means 
of enforcing religious unity, it constantly gives ^ ects 
rise to sects, with new deities and new forms of 
worship. Some of these have been formed in the nineteenth 
century, especially under the influence of Mohammedanism 
and Christianity. They are often attempts to replace the 


56 


The Far East in Antiquity 


popular idolatry and mythology with more spiritual concep¬ 
tions. 

Buddhism seems to have started as a reforming sect. 
Gautama, its founder, was born on the frontiers of Nepal. 
Gautama At t ^ ie a S e twenty-nine he abandoned home, 
Buddha, 560? wife, and child and went forth, as thousands of 
-477 ? b.c. others in his day, in search of salvation. He 
learned everything that the Brahmans could teach, but their 


philosophy did not satisfy him. 



He then became a hermit and 
for six years performed the 
most severe austerities. Fast¬ 
ing and other forms of self¬ 
mortification were also fruit¬ 
less; they brought no answer 
to his questionings. One day, 
however, as Gautama sat in 
meditation beneath a tree, the 
hour of illumination came and 
he found the truth which 
neither learning nor self-morti- 
fication had taught him. In 
that moment he became the 
Buddha, the Enlightened. 

For Buddha life is suffering. 

The only way to prevent its 
continuance from one rebirth to another is by suppressing 
Buddha’s fleshly lusts and even the craving for existence, 
teaching By rigid self-control, meditation, and holiness of 
thought and conduct man may attain, if not in the present life, 
then after a succession of lives, the final goal of Nirvana — the 
cessation of all personal existence. 

Buddha seems to have left the old beliefs of Hinduism prac¬ 
tically untouched, for Brahma, Indra, and other deities find 
Indian frequent mention in Buddhist scriptures. He did 

Buddhism sweep away, however, the cruel austerities, which 
were considered meritorious, together with the elaborate sacri¬ 
fices of animals. For Buddha all life was sacred, and hence 


Buddhist Prayer Wheel 

A small hand wheel from Burma; now in the 
United States National Museum, Washington. 
It consists of a metal cylinder, through which 
passes a wooden handle. Inside the cylinder is 
rolled a long strip of paper inscribed with the 
sacred Buddhist formula: Otn mani padtne hum 
(“ O jewel in the lotus flower ” ). Each revolu¬ 
tion of the cylinder counts as an uttered prayer. 




Indian Society and Culture 


57 


animal sacrifice was sinful. The caste system, which by this 
time had become firmly rooted in Indian society, Buddha 
allowed for laymen, but not in the order of monks and nuns 
which he founded. All men and women were equal, when 
they had entered the holy life. Buddhism, in course of time, 
became an organized religion, with sacred places thronged by 



Expansion oe Buddhism 


pilgrims, with monasteries and churches, which were excavated 
in rocks, and with a cult of saints and relics. The human person¬ 
ality of Buddha was lost to sight in the mists of legend sur¬ 
rounding him, and his image was everywhere worshiped. 
Indian Buddhism flourished for more than a thousand years. 
It declined from the eighth century a.d. and by the thirteenth 
or fourteenth century it had become practically extinct in 















5§ 


The Far East in Antiquity 


India proper, surviving only in Nepal on the north and in 
Ceylon on the south. 

The permanent conquests of Buddhism took place outside 
of India. During the early centuries of the Christian era it 
Non-Indian entered Burma, Siam, China, Korea, and Japan. 
Buddhism it a l so spread to Bhutan and Tibet, found many 
adherents among the tribes of Turkestan and Manchuria, 
and for a time even penetrated the Malay Archipelago. Its 
followers to-day may number as many as 450,000,000. In this 
estimate the entire population of China and Japan is counted 
as Buddhist, owing to the difficulty of separating Buddhism 
in those countries from the national faiths. 


The Aryans 


19 . The Aryans in India 

The history of India opens with the coming of the Aryans, 
who belonged to the Caucasian Race. Their language, called 
Sanskrit, is akin to the Iranian spoken by the 
ancient Medes and Persians, to Greek and Latin, 
and to the Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavic tongues of modern 
Europe. 1 All these are therefore known as Indo-European 
languages (§9). Sometime after 2000 b.c., the Sanskrit-speaking 
Aryans separated from their kinsmen on the plateau of Iran and 
began to enter India from the northwest. They came in succes¬ 
sive waves and occupied the valley of the Indus. 

The life of the Aryans is described in the Vedas, especially in 
the Rigveda, a collection of over a thousand hymns written in 
Early Aryan Sanskrit. The Aryans are there represented as a 
culture hardy, vigorous people; familiar with agriculture, 

though more given to pastoral pursuits; having chiefs, but 
no real kings; and worshiping the “bright gods” of nature 
with prayer and hymn and offering. No priesthood and no 
caste system existed. These Aryan communities doubtless 
resembled the Teutonic tribes, from which so many nations of 
western Europe have descended. 

The Aryans gradually spread eastward beyond the Indus 


1 See the table, “Classification of Mankind,” on page 21. 


The Aryans in India 


59 


and occupied the plain of the Ganges. There the invaders 
mingled more or less with the dark-skinned aboriginals (Dra- 
vidians), whose lands they seized and whom they Aryan expan- 
made serfs and slaves. The caste system arose. sion 
The village community developed. Petty tribal chieftainships 
gave place to powerful monarchies. The simple Vedic faith 
developed into the elaborate religion known as Hinduism or 
Brahmanism. 

About the end of the sixth century b.c. a king of Persia, 
Darius the Great, annexed the Indus region (Punjab) to his 
dominions. The Punjab was the richest and most India and the 
populous province of the Persian Empire for nearly West 
two hundred years. Alexander the Great, the Macedonian 
conqueror of Persia, then added it to his newly formed empire. 
The year of Alexander’s invasion, 326 b.c., is the first exact 
date in the history of India. From this time the peninsula 
began to emerge from obscurity. Graeco-Macedonian kings, 
the successors of Alexander, exerted some authority in northern 
India, and their courts were centers from which the Greeks 
influenced Indian art, especially sculpture, and Indian science, 
especially astronomy. Considerable commerce existed between 
India and the West, both by land routes through central Asia 
and by water routes leading across the Arabian Sea and up the 
Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. 1 Such Indian luxuries as pre¬ 
cious stones, ivory, spices, and fine cotton stuffs were thus 
introduced among the Western peoples. India always re¬ 
mained, however, outside the “Circuit of the Lands” (Orbis 
Terr arum) familiar to the ancient Greeks and Romans. 

Studies 

1. Determine on the map (facing page 36) what regions of Asia are less 
than 500 feet above sea level; less than 3000 feet; less than 9000 feet; over 
9000 feet. 2. Is the influence on civilization of such physical conditions 
as climate, fertility of soil, rainfall, mountain ranges, and rivers, greater or 
less to-day than in earlier times? 3. Show that Asia, geographically, may 
be divided into the Far East and the Near East. Does such a division also 
hold true historically? 4. Trace on the map (page 41) the area included 

1 See the map on page 16 . 


6o 


The Far East in Antiquity 


within the Chinese Empire at its greatest extent. 5. Give some account of 
Chinese ancestor worship. Why should it be so enduring ? 6. Who were 

Confucius and Lao Tze and what were their teachings? 7. Describe the 
caste system of India. How has it arisen ? What are its rules ? What 
is its influence? 8. Mention some of the principal gods of Hinduism. 
9. Trace on the map (page 57) the expansion of Buddhism. 10. “The 
isolation and consequent independent development of India and China 
is one of the most salient and significant facts of history.” Comment on 
this statement. n. Why was India better known in ancient times than 
China? 12. When did China and India begin to come under the influence 
of Western ideas ? 



" 'V .... 

l i :. % 

idteftlfiltf 


y. 


The Great Temple oe Siva at Tanjore 

Built about 1000 a.d. The central cella rises in a pyramid of 13 stories above a base 82 
feet square, and reaches a height of 190 feet. 


CHAPTER IV 


THE NEAR EAST IN ANTIQUITY 1 
20. Egypt 

The smaller of the two grand divisions of Asia is the Near 
East. It comprises the region between the Black and Caspian 
seas on the north, the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and The Near 
Indian Ocean on the south, the Indus River on East 
the east, and the Nile on the west. The Near East consists of 
several vegetation belts, whose respective areas may be traced 
on the accompanying map. The forest belt nourished a migra¬ 
tory, hunting folk. The steppe belt formed the home of nomadic, 
pastoral tribes. As for the semi-deserts and deserts, these 
were only habitable in oases. Men could settle down and 
adopt an agricultural life only where they were assured of a 
constant water supply and enduring sunlight. They found 
this assurance particularly in the valleys of the Nile and the 
Tigris-Euphrates rivers. 

The Nile is the longest of the great African rivers. The 
White Nile rises in the Nyanza lakes, flows due north, and re¬ 
ceives the waters of the Blue Nile near the modern ^ 

.... . The Nile 

town of Khartum. From this point the course of 

the river is broken by a series of five rocky rapids, misnamed 
cataracts, which can be shot by boats. Upper Egypt begins 
where the cataracts cease. It is a valley about five hundred 
miles long and about thirty miles wide. The strip of cultivable 
soil on each side of the river averages, however, only eight miles 
in width. Not far from modern Cairo the hills inclosing the 

1 Webster, Readings in Early European History, chapter i, “Three Oriental 
Peoples as Described by Herodotus”; chapter ii, “The Founders of the Persian 
Empire: Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius.” 

61 


62 


The Near East in Antiquity 


valley fall away, the Nile divides into numerous branches, and 
the delta of Lower Egypt begins. The sluggish stream passes 
through a region of mingled swamp and plain, and at length 
by three principal mouths empties into the Mediterranean. 

Egypt owes her existence to the Nile. Lower Egypt is a 
creation of the river by the gradual accumulation of sediment 
Egypt the at mout hs. Upper Egypt has been dug out of 

“ gift of the the desert sand and underlying rock by a process 

of erosion centuries long. The Nile once filled all 
the space between the hills that line its sides. It now flows 
through a thick layer of mud which has been deposited by the 
yearly inundation. 

People could live and thrive in Egypt. The soil, perhaps the 
most fertile in the world, produced after irrigation three crops 
Egypt a seat S ra i n > h ax > an d vegetables a year. The clay 
of early of the valley and easily worked stone from the 

civilization mountains near-by provided building materials. 
The hot, dry climate enabled the inhabitants to get along with 
little shelter and clothing. The Nile provided them with a 
natural highway for domestic trade. Such favoring circum¬ 
stances allowed the Egyptians to increase in numbers and to 
gather in populous communities. At a time when their neigh¬ 
bors were still in the darkness of the prehistoric age, the Egyp¬ 
tians had entered the light of history. 

The Nile Valley seems to have been inhabited at a remote period 
by Neolithic men in the barbarian stage of culture. They made 
Prehistoric beautiful implements of polished flint, fashioned 
era m Egypt pottery, built in brick and stone, sailed boats on 
the Nile, introduced such useful animals as the buffalo, ass, and 
goat, and tilled the soil. In time, they began to smelt copper 
(§5) and to write by means of phonetic signs (§ 10). Both 
metallurgy and sound writing arose in Egypt earlier than any¬ 
where else in the world. The Neolithic Egyptians must have 
lived at first in separate tribes, under the rule of chiefs. As 
civilization advanced, the tribal organization gave way to city- 
states, that is, to small, independent communities, each one 
centering about a town or a city. The city-states by 4000 B.c. 



n 








R, 


s 


Or. 




































































































Egypt 


63 


had combined into two kingdoms, one in the Delta, the other 
in Upper Egypt. 

The Egyptians began to keep written records about 3400 b.c. 
The date coincides pretty closely with that of the union of 
Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt into a national D awn of his- 
state, under a ruler named Menes. He was thus tor y in Egypt 
the founder of that long line of kings, or “Pharaohs” (as they 
are called in the Bible), who 
for nearly three thousand years 
held sway over Egypt. The 
Pharaohs ruled at first from 
Memphis, near the head of 
the Delta, but later Thebes 
in Upper Egypt became the 
Egyptian capital. 

Egypt occupies an isolated 
position, being protected by 
deserts on each side, by the 
Mediterranean on the north, 
and by the cataracts of the 
Nile (impeding navigation) 
on the south. Thus sheltered 
from the inroads T he Egyptian 
of foreign peoples, kingdom 
the Egyptians enjoyed many 
centuries of peaceful prog¬ 
ress. About 1800 b.c., how¬ 
ever, they came for a time 

under the sway of barbarous Semitic tribes, called Hyksos, 
who entered Egypt through the isthmus of Suez. After the 
expulsion of the intruders the Egyptians themselves began a 
career of conquest. The Pharaohs raised great armies, invaded 
Palestine, Phoenicia, and Syria, and extended their rule as far as 
the middle Euphrates. Even the islands of Cyprus and Crete 
seem to have become dependencies of Egypt. The conquered 
territories paid a tribute of the precious metals and merchandise, 
while the forced labor of thousands of war captives enabled 



Head of Mummy of Rameses II 

Museum of Gizeh 

The mummy was discovered in 1881 in an 
underground chamber near the site of Thebes. 
With it were the coffins and bodies of more 
than a score of royal personages. Rameses II 
was over ninety years of age at the time of 
his death. In spite of the somewhat grotesque 
disguise of mummification, the face of this 
famous Pharaoh still wears an aspect of maj¬ 
esty and pride. 


6 4 


The Near East in Antiquity 


Rameses II (about 1292-1225 b.c.) and other Pharaohs to 
erect great monuments in every part of their realm. Gradually, 
however, Egypt declined in warlike energy; her Asiatic posses¬ 
sions fell away; and the country itself in the sixth century b.c. 
became a part of the Persian Empire. 


21 . Babylonia 


Two famous rivers rise in the mountains of Armenia — the 
Tigris and the Euphrates. Flowing southward, they approach 

each other to form 



Seal of Sargon I 


a common valley, 

proceed in parallel 
channels for the 

The Tigris S reater 

and the part of 

Euphrates t h e { r 

course, and unite 
shortly before reach- 
In antiquity each river had a separate 
the Tigris and Euphrates bring 


ing the Persian Gulf. 
mouth. 1 The soil which 
down every year fills up the Persian Gulf at the rate of about 
three miles a century. Their delta was therefore much less 
extensive five or six thousand years ago than it is to-day. 

This delta forms a plain anciently about one hundred and 
seventy miles long and rarely more than forty miles wide. In 
The “land of the Old Testament it is called the “land of Shinar” 
Shinar” ( Genesis , xi, 2). We know it better as Babylonia, 
after Babylon, which became its leading city and capital. 

The plain of Babylonia was once wonderfully fertile. The 
alluvial soil, when properly irrigated, yielded abundant harvests 
Babylonia a w heat, barley, and millet. The fruit of the date 
seat of early palm provided a nutritious food. Although there 
civilization was nQ stone> c i a y was everywhere. Molded into 

brick and afterward dried in the sun, the clay became adobe , 
the cheapest building material imaginable. Nature, indeed, 


1 See the map facing this page. 




Babylonia 


65 


had done much for Babylonia. We can understand, therefore, 
why from prehistoric times people have been attracted to this 
region, and why it is here 
that we find another seat of 
early civilization. 

The valley of the Tigris- 
Euphrates, unlike that of the 
Nile, was not isolated. It 
opened on extensive moun¬ 
tain and steppe regions, the 
home of hunting or of pas¬ 
toral peoples. The Babylo- 
Their inroads nian kingdom 
and migrations into the fer¬ 
tile plain of the two rivers 
formed a constant feature 
of Babylonian history. The 
earliest inhabitants of the 
“land of Shinar,” about 
whom we know anything, 
were the Sumerians. They 
entered the country through 
the passes of the eastern or 
northern mountains, about 
four thousand years before 
Christ, gradually settled 
down to an agricultural life, 
and formed a number of 
independent city-states, each 
with its king and its patron 
god. After 

came Semitic-speaking peo¬ 
ples from northern Arabia. 

Under a leader named Sargon (about 2800 b.c.) the Semites 
subdued the Sumerians and began to adopt their civiliza¬ 
tion. Sargon united all the Sumerian city-states. He also 
carried his victorious arms as far west as Syria and rtiled over 



msm 

Stele oe Naram-Sin 

Louvre, Paris 

A sandstone bas-relief set up by Naram-Sin, 
one of the successors of Sargon. The monument 
represents the Babylonian king triumphing over 
his enemies in a hilly country. He is shown in 
military dress, with bow and arrow in his hands. 
Soldiers with standards and spears advance 
the Sumerians behind and below their monarch, while in the 
sky above shine the two stars of Ishtar, the war- 
goddess. 



66 


The Near East in Antiquity 


“ the countries of the sea of the setting sun” (the Mediterra¬ 
nean). Sargon was, in fact, the first of the world conquerors. 
Many centuries later another great Semitic ruler, Hammurabi 
(about 2100 b.c.), made his native city of Babylon, at first 
an obscure and unimportant place, the capital of what was 
henceforth called the Babylonian kingdom. The Babylonians, 
like the Egyptians, eventually came under foreign rule. They 
were subdued first by the warlike Assyrians, whose power 

was at its height in the 
eighth and seventh cen¬ 
turies b.c., and then by 
the still more warlike 
Persians in the sixth cen¬ 
tury. 

22 . Government 

Nothing like democracy 
existed in Egypt or Baby¬ 
lonia, or elsewhere in the 
Near East. The common 
people never acted as 
voters or law- 

Monarchy 

makers; they 
knew only monarchical 
rule. The king, especially 
in Egypt, was considered 
to be the earthly representative of the gods. Temples were 
erected to him and offerings were made to his sacred maj¬ 
esty. He had many duties. He was commander, judge, 
and high priest, all in one. In time of war, he led his troops 
and faced the perils of the battlefield. During intervals of 
peace, he held frequent audiences with his courtiers, hearing 
complaints, settling disputes, and issuing commands. The king 
was also occupied with a constant round of sacrifices, prayers, 
and processions, which could not be omitted without exciting 
the anger of the gods. Hammurabi, a conscientious ruler, 
describes^ himself as “a real father to his people.” 


Mmam ... 



Egyptian Royal Diadem 

The diadem consists of a broad band of gold with 
the asp on the forehead and the ends terminating in 
a representation of the same sacred serpent. 





Mansell 

QUIiEN NEFERTITI 

A painted limestone bust found at Tell-el-Amarna, Egypt, and now in the Neues Mu¬ 
seum, Berlin. Queen Nefertiti was the wife of Amenhotep IV (Ikhnaton) and mother- 
in-law of Tut-Ankh-Amen. She lived in the 14th century b.c. Egyptian art reached 
perhaps its highest level at this time, becoming more naturalistic and less formal. Cer¬ 
tainly few if any portraits have come down to us from the ancient world more beautiful 
than this head of the Egyptian queen. 















Tt • /-• 









Government 


67 


The monarchs always maintained luxurious courts. Royal 
magnificence reached its height with the Great King (emperor) 
of Persia. He lived far removed from the common The royal 
eye in the recesses of a lordly palace. When he court 
gave audience to his nobles, he sat on a gold and ivory throne. 
When he traveled, even on military expeditions, he carried with 
him costly furniture, gold and silver 
dishes, and gorgeous robes. Hun¬ 
dreds of servants, bodyguards, and 
officials were about him. All who 
approached his person prostrated 
themselves in the dust. “ Whatso¬ 
ever he commandeth them, they do. 

If he bid them make war, the one 
against the other, they do it; if he 
send them out against his enemies, 
they go, and break down moun¬ 
tains, walls, and towers. They slay 
and are slain, and transgress not 
the king’s commandment.” 1 

The political history of the Near 
East is largely a record of empire¬ 
building. As soon as one people 
became powerful, its kings started 
out as conquerors, to secure more 
territory, slaves, and Empire- 
booty and to satisfy building 
their lust for fighting. The kings 
thus built up empires — Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Per¬ 
sian. The empire of Persia was the last and most extensive. 
It included all the Near East, with the exception of Arabia. An 
enormous area, from the Indus to the Nile, yielded obedience 
to the Great King. Conquest, by forcibly uniting different 
peoples under one government, broke down their isolation 
and so helped to bring about more or less unity of civiliza¬ 
tion. 



A Persian King with his 
Attendants 


1 1 Esdras, iv, 3-5. 









68 


The Near East in Antiquity 


This work of unification was accomplished only at a fearful 
cost. The annals of Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, and Persia, 
not to speak of minor countries, are a story of 

Warfare \ . . . , _ ’ . . , 

towns and cities given to the names, oi the devas¬ 
tation of fertile regions, of the slaughter of men, women, and 
children, and of the enslavement of entire populations. Man- 



The Persian Empire at its greatest extent under Darius I (521-485 b.c.) embraced an 
enormous area. Its eastern and western frontiers were nearly 3000 miles apart, or con¬ 
siderably more than the distance between New York and San Francisco. Darius divided his 
dominions into provinces, about twenty in number, and connected them by military roads 
for the dispatch of troops and supplies. The Royal Road from Susa, the Persian capital, to 
Sardis in Lydia was about 1600 miles in length. Government couriers, using relays of fresh 
horses, could cover this distance in about a week. 


kind by this time had passed from the petty robbery, murder, 
and border feuds characteristic of savagery and barbarism to 
organized warfare, in which state was ranged against state and 
nation against nation. Peace formed the rare exception in the 
Near East. There was no such thing as international law 
regulating the relations of one community to another and no 
idea of international cooperation for human welfare. Each 
community looked out for itself; each one, if it could, sub¬ 
dued its neighbors and imposed its rule upon them. 


















Social Classes 


69 


23 . Social Classes 

Social equality, as we understand it, did not exist in the Near 
East. The kings, the nobles, and the priests absorbed most of 
the wealth, had most of the leisure, enjoyed the 
most privileges, and led the most comfortable Anstocracy 
lives. The aristocracy included large landowners, rich mer¬ 
chants and bankers, and especially high government officials. 
These persons were often very powerful. If the king failed 



Chariot and Horse of an Egyptian Nobleman 

A painting on the walls of the nobleman’s tomb at Thebes. 

to keep on good terms with them, they might at any time 
revolt and perhaps dethrone him. Many uprisings against 
the reigning monarch are recorded in Oriental history. 

The middle class included chiefly shopkeepers and pro¬ 
fessional men such as physicians and scribes. Though 
regarded as inferiors, they or their children had a 

Ci3.ss 

chance to rise in the world. One who accumulated 

wealth might hope to enter the priesthood or the exalted ranks 

of the nobility. 

No such hope encouraged the day laborer. His lot was 
poverty and unending toil. The artisan received a wage 
scarcely sufficient to keep him and his family from Artisans and 
starvation, while the peasant, after paying ex- peasants 
cessive rents and taxes on his farm, had left only a bare living. 



70 The Near East in Antiquity 

He worked under overseers who carried sticks and used them 
freely. “Man has a back,” says an Egyptian proverb, “and 
only obeys when it is beaten.” 

The slaves occupied the base of the social pyramid. At first, 
they were prisoners of war, who, instead of being slaughtered, 
g were forced to labor for their masters. Rulers 

undertook military expeditions for the express 
purpose of gathering slaves— “like the sand,” says an ancient 
writer. Persons unable to pay their debts often lost their 
freedom. Criminals, also, were sometimes compelled to enter 



The picture shows from left to right a scribe, two plowmen, one holding the plow and one 
driving the oxen, a man with a hoe, who breaks up the clods left by the plow, and a sower 
scattering seed from a bag. 


into servitude. The treatment of slaves depended on the 
character of their master. A cruel and overbearing master 
might make life a burden for them. Slaves had plenty to do. 
They repaired dikes, dug irrigation ditches, erected temples 
and palaces, labored in the mines, served as oarsmen in ships, 
and engaged in many household activities. 

24. Occupations 

Such fruitful, well-watered valleys as those of the Nile and 
the Euphrates encouraged agricultural life. Wheat, barley, 
, and millet were first domesticated either in Egypt 

Agriculture . . . , T 

or m Babylonia. There is good reason, indeed, for 
believing that these most important cereals, together with 
domesticated cattle, were introduced into Neolithic Europe 
from the Near East (§4). All the methods of farming are 
pictured for us on Egyptian monuments. We mark the peasant 






Occupations 


7 i 


as he breaks up the earth with a hoe or plows a shallow furrow 
with a sharp-pointed stick. We see the sheep being driven 
across sown fields to trample the seed into the moist soil. We 
watch the patient laborers as with sickles they gather in the 
harvest and then with heavy flails separate the chaff from the 
grain. Although their methods were crude, ancient farmers 
raised large crops. The soil of Egypt and Babylonia not only 
supported a dense population, but also supplied food for 
neighboring countries. These two regions were the granaries 
of the Near East. 

Blacksmiths, carpenters, stone-cutters, weavers, potters, 
glass blowers, and workers in ivory, silver, and gold were found 
in every city. The creations of these ancient 
craftsmen often exhibit remarkable skill. Egyp¬ 
tian linens were so wonderfully fine and transparent as to merit 
the name of “woven air.” Egyptian glass, with its lines of 
different hues, was much prized. Babylonian tapestries, car¬ 
pets, and rugs enjoyed a high reputation for beauty of design 
and coloring. Some of the industrial arts thus practiced thou¬ 
sands of years ago have been revived only in modern times. 

The development of arts and crafts made it profitable for 
merchants to collect manufactured products where they could 
be readily bought and sold. The cities of Baby- 

, . . J ? . . ... _ J Trade 

loma, m particular, became thriving markets. 

Partnerships between tradesmen were not uncommon. We 

even learn of commercial companies not so very unlike our 

present corporations. Business life in Babylonia wore, indeed, 

quite a modern look. 

Metallic money first circulated in the form of rings and 
bars. The Egyptians had small pieces of gold — “cow gold” 
— each of which was simply the value of a full- 

Money 

grown cow. It was necessary to weigh the metal 
whenever a purchase took place. A common picture on the 
Egyptian monuments is that of the weigher with his balance 
and scales. The practice then arose of stamping each piece 
of money with its true value and weight. The next step was 
coinage proper, where the government guarantees, not only. 


72 The Near East in Antiquity 


the weight, but also the genuineness of the metal. Credit for 
the invention of coinage belongs to the Lydians of western Asia 
Minor, whose country was well supplied with the precious metals. 
The kings of Lydia began to coin money as early as the eighth 
century b.c. The Greek neighbors of Lydia quickly adopted 
the art of coinage and so introduced it into Europe. 1 



On the left three villagers, who have failed to pay their taxes, are being brought in by 
officers. The latter carry staves. On the right sit the scribes, holding in one hand a sheet 
of papyrus and in the other hand a pen. The scribes kept records of the amount owed by 
each taxpayer and issued receipts when the taxes were paid. 


The use of money as a means of exchange led naturally to 
a system of banking. One great banking house at Babylon 
Banking carried on operations for several centuries. Hun¬ 
dreds of legal documents belonging to this firm have 
been discovered in the huge earthenware jars which served as 
safes. The temples in Babylonia also received money on 
deposit and loaned it out again, as do our modern banks. 
Babylonian business usages and credit devices spread through 
Asia Minor to Greece and thence into other European countries. 


25. Commerce and Trade Routes 

Commerce, which has always been a means of enabling 
different peoples to know and influence one another, was in 
Obstacles to early times exposed to many dangers. Wild 
commerce tribes and bands of robbers infested the roads and 
obliged the traveler to be ever on guard against attack. Travel 

1 For illustrations of Oriental, Greek, and Roman coins, see the plate facing page 
200 . 


































Commerce and Trade Routes 


73 


by water also had its drawbacks. Boats were small and easily 
swamped in rough weather. With a single sail and few oars¬ 
men, progress was very slow. Without compass or chart, the 
navigator seldom ventured into the open sea. He hugged the 
coast as closely as possible, keeping always a sharp eye for 
pirates who might seize his vessel and sell him into slavery. 
In spite of all these risks, the profits of foreign trade were so 
great that much intercourse existed between the different 
countries of the Near East. 



From a slab found at Nineveh in the palace of the Assyrian king, Sennacherib. The vessel 
shown is a bireme with two decks. On the upper deck are soldiers with their shields hanging 
over the side. The oarsmen sit on the lower deck, eight at each side. The crab catching the 
fish is a humorous touch. 


The Egyptians, pioneers in so many fields of human activity, 
are believed to have made the first seagoing ships. As early as 
the thirtieth century b.c., they began to venture Egyptian 
out into the eastern Mediterranean and to carry on commerce 
a thriving trade with both Cyprus and Crete, which lay almost 
opposite the mouths of the Nile. The ships of the Pharaohs 
also sailed up and down the entire length of the Red Sea. 

The cities of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley were admirably 
situated for commerce, by both sea and land. The shortest 
way by water from India skirted the-southern coast of Iran and, 











74 


The Near East in Antiquity 


passing up the Persian Gulf, gained the valley of the two rivers. 
There were also overland roads for caravan trade from India 
Babylonian and China. These converged at Babylon and 
and Assyrian Nineveh (the Assyrian capital) and then spread 
commerce westward to Asia Minor, Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine, 

and Egypt. All these routes have been arteries of commerce 
from prehistoric times. Many of them are in use even to-day . 1 

A Semitic people, the Phoenicians (§ io), who occupied a 
narrow stretch of the Syrian coast, were the common carriers 
Phoenician of the Mediterranean after about 1000 b.c. 
water routes Phoenician water routes soon extended to Cyprus, 
only a short distance away, then to Crete, then to the islands of 
the iEgean, and, at least occasionally, to the shores of the Black 
Sea. When the Phoenicians were finally driven from these 
regions by the rising power of the Greek states, they sailed 
farther westward and established trading posts in Sicily, Sar¬ 
dinia, North Africa, and Spain. They also passed through 
the Strait of Gibraltar into the stormy Atlantic and visited 
the coasts of western Europe and Africa. 

The Phoenicians obtained a great variety of products as a 
result of their commercial voyages. The mines of Spain yielded 
Phoenician iron, tin, lead, and silver. Tin, which was espe- 
imports and dally valuable because of its use in making bronze, 
exports seems also to have been brought from southwestern 

Britain (Cornwall), where mines of this metal are still productive. 
From Africa came ivory, ostrich feathers, and gold; from Arabia, 
which the Phoenicians also visited, came incense, perfumes, and 
costly spices. These commodities found a ready sale throughout 
the Near East. Still other products were imported directly 
into Phoenicia to provide raw materials for her flourishing man¬ 
ufactures. The fine carpets and glassware, the artistic works 
in silver and bronze, and the beautiful purple cloths produced 
in the factories of Tyre and Sidon were exported to every part 
of the known world. 

The Phoenicians were the boldest sailors of antiquity. Some 
of their long voyages are still on record. We learn from the 
1 See the map on page 16. 


































































* V •, 












’ 

















' »• 












































' 

- • - 

• . 



















































. T ' . 



- 


































































Law and Morality 


75 


Old Testament that they made cruises on the Red Sea and Indian 
Ocean and brought the gold of Ophir, “four hundred and 
twenty talents,” to Solomon. 1 There is even a Phcenician 
story of certain Phoenicians who, by direction of voyages of 
an Egyptian king, explored the eastern coast of ex P loratlon 
Africa, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and after three years’ 
absence returned to Egypt through the Strait of Gibraltar. 
A much more probable narrative is that of the voyage of Hanno, 
a Carthaginian admiral. We still possess a Greek translation 
of his interesting log book. It describes an expedition made 
about 500 b.c. along the western coast of Africa. The explorers 
seem to have sailed as far as the Gulf of Guinea. Nearly two 
thousand years passed before Portuguese navigators undertook 
a similar voyage to the Dark Continent. 

The Phoenicians established settlements wherever they went. 
Most of these were merely trading posts which contained ware¬ 
houses for the storage of goods. Here the shy Phoenician 
natives came to barter their raw materials for the settlements 
finished products — cloths, tools, weapons, wine, and oil — 
which the strangers from the East had brought with them. 
Phoenician settlements sometimes grew into large and flourishing 
cities. Gades in southern Spain, which was the most distant 
of their colonies, survives to this day as Cadiz, one of the oldest 
cities in Europe. Carthage, founded in northern Africa by col¬ 
onists from Tyre, became the commercial mistress of the western 
Mediterranean. Carthaginian history, as we shall learn, 
has many points of contact with that of the Greeks and Romans. 

26 . Law and Morality 

Human activities in the Near East seem to have gone on in 
orderly fashion much of the time. Except in time of war, life 
was fairly safe, property was reasonably secure, and Egyptian 
people were protected in their occupations. Egypt, law 
we know, had courts of justice, law books (unfortunately lost), 
and definite rules relating to contracts, loans, leases, mortgages, 


1 See 1 Kings , ix, 26-28. 


76 


The Near East in Antiquity 


partnerships, marriage, and the family. The position of woman 
was remarkably high: she had full rights of ownership and 
inheritance and she could engage in business on her own account. 
Though polygamy existed, chiefly among the upper classes, the 
wife was her husband’s companion and not merely his domestic 
servant. The reverence due from children to father and mother 
was constantly insisted upon, and filial piety for the Egyptians 
ranked among the highest virtues. 





The Judgment of the Dead 


From a papyrus containing the Book of the Dead. The illustration shows a man and his 
wife (at the left) entering the hall in the spirit world, where sits the god of the dead with 
forty-two jurors (seen above) as his assistants. The heart of the man, symbolized by a jar, 
is being weighed in balances by a jackal-headed god against a feather, the symbol of truth. 
The monster in the right-hand corner stands ready to devour the soul, if the heart is found 
lighter than the feather. 

The most enlightening notice of Egyptian moral standards 
is found in a very ancient work known as the Book of the Dead. 
Declaration One of the chapters describes the judgment of the 
of innocence dead in the other world. If the soul was to enjoy 
a blissful immortality, it must be able to recite truthfully before 
its judges a Declaration of Innocence. These are some of the 
statements: “I did not steal”; “I did not murder”; “I did 
not lie”; “I did not kill any sacred animals”; “I did not 
damage any cultivated land” ; “I did not do any witchcraft” ; 
“I did not blaspheme a god”; “I did not make false accusa¬ 
tions”; “I did not revile my father”; “I did not cause a 
slave to be ill-treated by his master”; “I did not make 
































Law and Morality 


77 


any one weep.” After pleading innocence of all the forty-two 
sins condemned by Egyptian ethics, the soul added, “ Grant 
that he may come unto you ... he that hath given bread to 
the hungry and drink to the thirsty, and that hath clothed 
the naked with garments.” Some of the clauses of the Decla¬ 
ration of Innocence correspond 
with some of the Ten Command¬ 
ments, while the affirmative state¬ 
ment at the end makes a close 
approach to Christian morality. 

The Babylonians were a very 
legal-minded people. When a man 
sold his wheat, bought a slave, 
married a wife, or made a will, the 
transaction was duly noted on a 
contract tablet. He Babylonian 
then stamped his seal law 
on the soft clay of the tablet. 

Every one who owned property 
had to have a seal. A contract 
tablet was protected from deface¬ 
ment by being placed in a hollow 
clay case, or envelope. 

A recent discovery has pro¬ 
vided us with almost the com¬ 
plete text of the laws which 

Hammurabi, the Babylonian shows the Babylonian king receiving the 
king, ordered en- code of 
graved on Stone Hammurabi 

monuments and set up in the 
chief cities of his realm. Hammurabi’s 
general, a keen sense of justice. 



Hammurabi and the Sun God 
Louvre, Paris 

A shaft of stone, nearly 8 feet high, con¬ 
tains the code of Hammurabi. The monu¬ 
ment was found on the site of Susa in 
1901-1902. It is engraved in 44 columns 
and over 3600 lines. A relief at the top 


laws from the sun god, who is seated at 
the right. Flames rising from the god’s 
shoulders indicate his solar character. 


code shows, in 
A man who tries to bribe 
a witness or a judge is to be severely punished. A farmer 
who is careless with his dikes and allows the water to run 
through and flood his neighbor’s land must restore the value 
of the grain he has damaged. The owner of a vicious ox 
which has gored a man must pay a heavy fine, provided he 










78 


The Near East in Antiquity 


knew the disposition of the animal and had not blunted its horns. 
On the other hand, the code contains some rude features, espe¬ 
cially its reliance upon retaliation — “eye for eye, tooth for 
tooth ” — as the punishment of injuries. For instance, a son who 
struck his father was to have his hands cut off. The nature of 
the punishment depended, moreover, on the rank of the aggrieved 
party. A person who had caused the loss of a “gentleman’s” 
eye was to have his own plucked out; but if the injury was 
done to a poor man, the culprit had only to pay a fine. Ham¬ 
murabi’s code thus presents a vivid picture of Babylonian 
society twenty-one centuries before Christ. 

The laws which we find in the earlier part of the Old Testa¬ 
ment were ascribed by the Hebrews to Moses. The Bible states 
The Mosaic that he had received them from Jehovah on Mount 
code Sinai. They covered a wide range of subjects, 

fixing all religious ceremonies, requiring the observance every 
seventh day of the Sabbath, giving numerous and compli¬ 
cated rules for sacrifices, and even indicating what foods must be 
avoided as “unclean.” The Jews, throughout the world, still 
obey these laws. Modern Christendom still recites the Ten 
Commandments, the noblest summary of the rules of right 
living that has come down to us from Oriental antiquity. 

27 . Religion 

The worship of nature, so common among savage and bar¬ 
barous peoples, survived in Egypt and Babylonia. The vault 
Nature of heaven, earth and ocean, and sun, moon, and 

worship stars were all regarded as themselves divine or 

as the abode of divinities. The sun formed an object of par¬ 
ticular adoration. We find a sun god, under different names, 
throughout the Near East. 

The Egyptians, very conservative in religious matters, always 
kept the animal worship of their primitive ancestors. Some 
Animal gods were represented on monuments in partly 

worship animal form, one having a baboon’s head, another 

the head of a lioness, another that of a cat. Such animals 
as the jackal, bull, ram, hawk, and crocodile also received 


Religion 


79 


Evil spirits 


Divination 


the utmost reverence, less for themselves, however, than as 
symbols of different gods. 

A belief in the existence of evil spirits formed a prominent 
feature of Babylonian religion. People supposed themselves 
to be constantly surrounded by a host of demons, 
who caused insanity, sickness, accidents, and death 
— all human ills. To cope with these spiritual enemies the 
Babylonian used magic. He put up an image of a protecting 
god at the entrance of his home and wore 
charms upon his person. If he fell ill, he 
had a magician recite a charm which would 
drive out the demon inside him. 

The Babylonians had many ways of 
predicting the future. Soothsayers divined 
from dreams and from the casting of lots. 

Omens of prosperity or misfor¬ 
tune were also drawn from the 
appearance of the entrails of animals slain 
in sacrifice. A sheep’s liver was commonly 
used for this purpose. Divination by the 
liver was studied for centuries in the temple 
schools of Babylonia. The practice after¬ 
ward spread to the Greeks and Romans. 

Astrology received much attention in 
Babylonia. The five planets then recog¬ 
nized, as well as comets and eclipses, were 
thought to exercise an influence for good 
or evil on the life of man. Babylonian astrology Agtrology 
passed to western lands and became popular in much 
of Europe. When we name the days Saturday, Sunday, and 
Monday, we are unconscious astrologers, for in old belief the 
first day belonged to the planet Saturn, the second to the sun, 
and the third to the moon. 1 People who try to read their fate 
in the stars are really practicing an art of Babylonian origin. 

1 The names of the other weekdays come from the names of old Teutonic deities. 
Tuesday is the day of Tiu (the Teutonic Mars), Wednesday of Woden (Mercury), 
Thursday of Thor (Jupiter), and Friday of the goddess Frigg (Venus). 



A Babylonian 
Demon 

A bronze, animal-headed 
figure, now in the British 
Museum, London. 


8o 


The Near East in Antiquity 


Some Egyptian thinkers reached the idea of a single supreme 
divinity. One of the Pharaohs, Amenhotep IV (about 1375- 
Monotheism 1358 b.c.), who saw in the sun the source of all 
in Egypt life on the ear th, ordered his subjects to worship 
that luminary alone. The names of other gods were erased 



Royal Sacrifice to the Sun God 

Amenhotep IV (Ikhnaton), with his wife, Nefertiti and his six daughters, sacrifices to the 
Solar Disk, whose life-giving rays, each ending in a hand, stream toward him. 


from the monuments, their images destroyed, their temples 
closed, and their priests expelled. No such lofty faith had ever 
appeared before, but it was too abstract and impersonal to win 
popular favor. The old deities were restored to honor after 
the king’s death. 

The Persians adopted the monotheistic doctrines of Zoroaster, 
a great prophet whose date is variously placed between 1000 























































TUT-ANKH-AMEN’S THRONE 

Copyright. Used by permission of Howard Carter, Esq., London 

Remarkable discoveries were made in Egypt during 1922-1923 by Mr. Howard Carter, in the 
course of excavations maintained by the late Earl of Carnavon. Mr. Carter uncovered in the 
Valley of the Kings, across the Nile from Thebes, the underground tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen, 
who reigned about the middle of the 14th century b.c. Never before had an unrifled royal 
tomb been found in Egypt. It was full of magnificent furniture and objects of art. One of 
the most beautiful of the “finds” was the Pharaoh’s throne. It is overlaid with sheet gold, 
while the seat, back, and arms are embellished with faience in colors as brilliant to-day as they 
were more than 3000 years ago. The back panel shows the boy-king on his throne, while the 
queen touches his collar with perfume from a vase which she holds in her hand. 









Am 










































Religion 


81 


and 700 b.c. Zoroaster taught that Ahura Mazda, the 
heaven-deity, is the maker and upholder of the universe. 
He is a god of light and order, of truth and purity. 

Against him stands Ahriman, the personification 
of darkness and evil. These rival powers are 
engaged in a ceaseless struggle. Man, by doing right and 
avoiding wrong, by loving truth and hating falsehood, can help 
make Good triumph over Evil. Ahura Mazda in the end will 
overcome Ahriman and will reign supreme over a righteous 
world. Zoroastrianism still survives in some parts of Persia 
(though that country is now chiefly Mohammedan), as well as 
among the Parsees (Persians) of Bombay Presidency, India. 

The Hebrews also developed a monotheistic religion. The 
Old Testament shows how it came about. Jehovah was at 
first regarded by the Hebrews as simply their own Hebrew 
national deity; they did not deny the existence monotheism 
of the deities of other nations, though they refused to worship 
them. This narrow, limited conception was gradually trans¬ 
formed by the teaching of Isaiah and other prophets. Jehovah, 
for them, was the God of the whole earth and the loving Father 
of all mankind. The noble faith of the prophets gradually 
spread through the entire nation, culminating in the doctrine 
of Jesus that God is a Spirit and that they who worship him 
must worship him in spirit and in truth. The Christian doctrine 
of God is thus directly an outgrowth of Hebrew monotheism. 

The Egyptians, like their neighbors, believed that man has a 
soul which survives the death of the body. They The future 
thought it essential, however, to preserve the body llfe 
from destruction, so that it might remain to the end of time a 
home for the soul. Hence arose the practice of embalming. 
The embalmed body (mummy) was then placed in the grave, 
which the Egyptians called an “eternal dwelling.” Later 
Egyptian thought represented the future as a place of rewards 
and punishments, where, as we have just learned (§ 26), the 
soul underwent the ordeal of a last judgment. The Babylonians 
supposed that after death the souls of all men, good and bad 
alike, passed a cheerless existence in a gloomy underworld. 


82 


The Near East in Antiquity 


The early Hebrew idea of Sheol, “the land of darkness and the 
shadow of death,” 1 was very similar. Such thoughts of the 
future life left nothing for either fear or hope. The Hebrews 
later came to believe in the resurrection of the dead and the last 
judgment, conceptions taken over by Christianity. 

28 . Literature 

Religion inspired the largest part of the literature produced in 
the Near East. The Egyptian Book of the Dead was already 
“ Book of the ancient in 2000 b.c. It was a collection of 
Dead ” hymns, prayers, and magical phrases to be recited 

by the soul on its journey beyond the grave and in the spirit 
land. A chapter from this work usually covered the inner 
side of the mummy case, or coffin. 

The two Babylonian epics are more interesting. Portions of 
them have been found on clay tablets in a royal library at 
The Baby- Nineveh. The epic of the Creation tells how the 
Ionian epics god Marduk overcame a terrible dragon, the sym¬ 
bol of primeval chaos, and thus established order in the universe. 
With half of the body of the dead dragon he made a covering 
for the heavens and set therein the stars. He then caused 
the new moon to shine and made it the ruler of the night. His 
last work was the creation of man, in order that the service and 
worship of the gods might be established forever. The second 
epic contains an account of a Deluge, sent by the gods to pui#sh 
sinful man. The rain fell for six days and nights and covered 
the entire earth. All people were drowned, except the Babylo¬ 
nian Noah, his family, and his relatives, who safely rode the 
waters in a boat. This ancient narrative closely resembles the 
Biblical story in Genesis. 

The sacred books of the Hebrews, which we call the Old 
Testament, include nearly every kind of literature. Sober 
The Old histories, beautiful stories, exquisite poems, wise 
Testament proverbs, and noble prophecies are found in this 
collection. The influence of the Old Testament upon the 


1 Job, x, 21. 


The Fine Arts 


83 

Hebrews, and through them upon the Christian world for 
nineteen centuries, has been profound. We shall not be wrong 
in regarding this work as the most important single contribution 
made by any ancient people to modern civilization. 


29 . The Fine Arts 

Architecture really started with the Egyptians, who first 
made use of the stone column, arch, and spire. Their wealth 
and skill were not lavished on the erection of fine Egyptian 
private mansions or splendid public buildings, architecture 
The characteristic works of Egyptian architecture were the 



The Dying Lioness 

British Museum, London 

From the palace of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. 


tombs of the kings and the temples of the gods. These struc¬ 
tures, even in their ruins, leave upon the observer an impression 
of peculiar massiveness, solidity, and grandeur. They seem 
built for eternity. 

The architecture of the Tigris-Euphrates peoples differed 
entirely from that of the Egyptians, because brick, and not 
stone, formed the chief building material. In Babylonian 
Babylonia the most characteristic structure was and Assyrian 
the temple. It was a solid square tower, rising architecture 
in stages (usually seven) to the top, where the shrine of the 


8 4 


The Near East in Antiquity 



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Science 


85 


deity stood. The different stages were connected by a winding 
ascent. These tower-temples must have been very conspicuous 
objects in the “land of Shinar.” In Assyria the most character¬ 
istic structure was the palace. The sun-dried bricks, of which 
both temples and palaces were composed, lacked the durability 
of stone and have long since dissolved into shapeless mounds. 

The surviving examples of Egyptian sculpture consist of 
bas-reliefs and figures in the round', carved from limestone and 
granite or cast in bronze. Though many of the g i ^ 
statues appear to our eyes very stiff and ungraceful, 
others are wonderfully lifelike and beautiful. Some Assyrian 
bas-reliefs also show a considerable development of the artistic 
sense, especially in the representation of animals. 

Painting in the Near East had solely a decorative character. 
Bas-reliefs and wall surfaces were often brightly Painting 
colored, but easel work seems to have been un¬ 
known. The pictorial art was therefore less developed than in 
China and other Far-Eastern countries (§ 16). 

30 . Science 

Conspicuous advance took place in the exact sciences. A 
very old Egyptian manuscript contains arithmetical problems 

with fractions as well as whole numbers, and geo- 

... Mathematics 

metrical formulas for computing the capacity of 

storehouses and the area of fields. A Babylonian table gives 
squares and cubes correctly calculated from 1 to 60. The 
number 12 was the basis of all Babylonian reckonings. The 
division of the circle into degrees, minutes, and seconds (360°, 
60', 60") is a device which illustrates this duodecimal system. 

The cloudless skies and still, warm nights of the great river 
valleys early led to astronomical research. The Egyptians by 
4000 B.c. had given up reckoning time by lunar Astronomy 
months (the interval between two new moons) 
and had formed a solar calendar consisting of twelve thirty-day 
months, with five extra days at the end of the year. This 
calendar, improved by the insertion of leap years, has come 


86 


The Near East in Antiquity 


down to us (§ n). The Babylonians made noteworthy progress 
in some branches of astronomy. They were able to trace the 
course of the sun through the twelve constellations of the 
zodiac, 1 to distinguish five of the planets, and to predict eclipses 
of the sun and of the moon. Such discoveries must have 
required much patient and accurate study of the heavens. 

E . . The art of stone masonry arose in Egypt earlier 

than anywhere else in the world. It soon pro¬ 
duced the Great Pyramid, the largest stone structure ever 

erected in ancient or (until 
recently) in modern times. 
The Egyptians were also 
the first people who learned 
how to raise buildings with 
vast halls, the roofs of 
which were supported by 
rows of columns (colon¬ 
nades). An upper story, 
or clerestory, containing 
windows, made it possible 
to light the interior of these 
halls. The column, the 
colonnade, and the clere¬ 
story, as architectural de¬ 
vices, were adopted by 
Greek and Roman build¬ 
ers, from whom they de¬ 
scended to medieval and modern Europe. Europe owes to 
Babylonia the round arch and vault as a means of carry¬ 
ing a wall or roof over a void. In both Egypt and Babylonia 
the transportation of colossal stone monuments exhibits a 
knowledge of the lever, pulley, and inclined plane. 

The Oriental peoples made some progress in medicine. A 
medical treatise found in Egypt distinguishes various diseases 
and notes their symptoms. The curious characters by which 

1 The zodiac is the belt of the sky, about sixteen degrees wide, in which the move¬ 
ments of the sun, moon, and greater planets appear to take place. 



An Egyptian Sun Dial 


Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 
Sun clocks were used by the Egyptians, and one 
of these, dating from about 1200 b.c., was found at 
Gezer in southern Palestine. 



Science 


87 


druggists indicate grains and drams are of Egyptian origin. 
There were physicians and surgeons in Babylonia as early as 
the time of Hammurabi. The healing art, how- 

1 1*1 . . . . Medicine 

ever, was always much mixed up with magic, just 
as astronomy, the scientific study of the heavens, was confused 
with astrology. 

The schools, in both Egypt and Babylonia, were attached to 
the temples and were con¬ 
ducted by the priests. Read¬ 
ing and writing formed the 
chief subjects of study. It 
took many years Schools and 
to master the libraries 
hieroglyphs or the cuneiform 
symbols. A pupil who had 
learned to read and write 
might become a scribe. When 
a man wished to send a letter, 
he had a scribe write it, sign¬ 
ing it himself by affixing his 
seal. When he received a let¬ 
ter, he usually employed a 
scribe to read it to him. The 
scribes were also kept busy 

Copying books on the papyrus dictation or making an inventory, 
paper or clay tablets which 

served as writing materials. Both the Egyptians and the 
Babylonians possessed libraries, usually as adjuncts to the 
temples and hence under priestly control. 

These schools and libraries were not freely open to the public. 
As a rule, only the well-to-do could secure any learning. The 
common people remained grossly ignorant. Their Education 
ignorance involved their intellectual bondage to 
the past; they were slow to abandon time-honored superstitions 
and reluctant to adopt new customs even when better than 
the old. Consequently, civilization in this part of the world 
tended to become fixed and unchanging. It reached a certain 



The Scribe Accroupi 

Louvre, Paris 

A very ancient portrait statue. It repre¬ 
sents a scribe with pen and papyrus roll taking 


88 


The Near East in Antiquity 


level, but could not pass above that level. The next steps in 
human progress were to be taken in Europe. 


31 . The Near East and Europe 


Our study of the Near East in antiquity has been confined 
chiefly to the Nile and Tigris-Euphrates valleys. The Egyptians 
Origin of and the Babylonians originated civilization during 
civilization the thousand years between 4000 and 3000 b.c., 
while all the rest of the world continued either in Neolithic 
barbarism or Palaeolithic savagery. In Egypt and Babylonia 
men first developed out of the tribal state and began to form 
cities, states, kingdoms, and empires; here they first passed 
from hunting, fishing, and herding to the cultivation of the 
soil, manufacturing, and commerce; here first arose metallurgy, 
architecture, phonetic writing, mathematics, astronomy, medi¬ 
cine, and many other arts and sciences indispensable to the 
higher life of mankind. 

After 3000 b.c. civilization began to be difused from its 
Egypto-Babylonian centers. Conquest, trade, and travel 
Diffusion of during the next twenty-five centuries led to increas- 
civiiization i n g contact of peoples. By 500 b.c. the best of 
what the Egyptians and Babylonians had thought and done 
became the common possession of the Near East. 

Civilization was transmitted from the Near East to the West. 
The Cretans, about whom we shall soon learn (§ 34), carried 
Transmission the products and practical arts of both Egypt and 
of civilization Babylonia to the islands of the Tgean and the 
Greek mainland, and even farther west to southern Italy, 
Sicily, and the coast of Spain. They were followed by the 
Phoenicians (§ 25), whose influence was felt in every country 
washed by the Mediterranean. Cretans and Phoenicians made 
use of water routes between the Near East and the West. 
Other transmitting peoples used the land routes through Asia 
Minor. This peninsula, by its position, belongs nearly as much 
to Europe as to Asia. It has always proved a natural link 
between the two continents. 


The Near East and Europe 


89 


Studies 

1. Trace on the map (facing page 64) the vegetation belts in the Near 
East. 2. Why was Egypt called the “gift of the Nile”? 3. What 
is the origin of the name Delta applied to such a region as Lower Egypt? 
4. Ancient Babylonia contained about 23,000 square miles. With what 
American state would it,compare in size? 5. Define and illustrate the 
terms tribe, city-state, kingdom, and empire, as used in this chapter. 
6. Trace on the map (page 68) the area included within the Persian Empire 
at its greatest extent. 7. Where were the principal trade routes between the 
Far East and the Near East in antiquity (map on page 16) ? 8. Locate 

the most important Phoenician water routes and settlements (map facing 
page 74). 9. Read in the Old Testament ( Ezekiel, xxxvii) the account 

there given of Phoenician commerce. 10. Compare the Egyptian Decla¬ 
ration of Innocence with the Ten Commandments. 11. Define polytheism 
and monotheism, giving examples of each. 12. How many “books” 
are there in the New Testament? What is the Apocrypha? 13. From 
what Oriental people do we get the oldest true arch? the first coined 
money? the earliest legal code? the most ancient book? 14. Why 
were the inventions and discoveries of the Egyptians and Babylonians of 
such great importance in the development of civilization? 15. What 
were some of the drawbacks to civilization as developed in the Near East? 




An Egyptian Scarab 

The beetle, as a symbol of birth and resurrection, 
and hence of immortality, enjoyed much reverence in 
ancient Egypt. A scarab, or image of the beetle, was 
often worn as a charm and was placed in the mummy 
as an artificial heart. 














CHAPTER V 


GREECEi 

32. Lands and Peoples of the West 

History, which begins in the East, for the last twenty-five 
centuries has centered in the West, that is, in Europe. Modern 
Europe in industry and commerce, modern systems of gov- 

history ernment, modern art, literature, and science are 

very much the creation, during this long period, of European 
peoples. Within the last four hundred years, especially, they 
have occupied and populated America and Australia and have 
brought under their control the largest part of Asia, nearly the 
whole of Africa, and the islands of all the seas. They have in¬ 
troduced into these remote regions their languages, laws, customs, 
and religion, until to-day the greater part of the world is subject 
to European influence. 

Yet Europe ranks as the smallest, except Australia, of the six 
continents. Geographically, it is not a continent but a peninsula 
Area of of Asia. Map makers usually place the dividing 

Europe line a t the Ural Mountains, the Caspian Sea, and 

the Caucasus. Estimates of the total area of Europe vary from 
about 3,600,000 square miles to about 4,100,000 square miles. 
On the basis of the lower figure mentioned; Europe has con¬ 
siderably less than half the area of either North America or 

1 Webster, Readings in Early European History, chapter iii, “ Early Greek Society 
as Pictured in the Homeric Poems”; chapter iv, “Stories from Greek Mythology”; 
chapter v, “Some Greek Tyrants”; chapter vi, “Spartan Education and Life”; 
chapter vii, “Xerxes and the Persian Invasion of Greece”; chapter viii, “Episodes 
from the Peloponnesian War”; chapter ix, “Alcibiades the Athenian”; chapter x, 
“The Expedition of the Ten Thousand”; chapter xi, “The Trial and Death of 
Socrates”; chapter xii, “Demosthenes and the Struggle against Philip”; chapter 
xiii, “Exploits of Alexander the Great.” 


90 


Lands and Peoples of the West 


9i 


South America, less than one-third that of Africa, and little more 
than one-fifth that of Asia. It includes not quite seven per cent 
of the land surface of the globe. 

The geographical advantages enjoyed by Europe account, in 
part, for its historic importance. The sea penetrates deeply 
into the continent, forming numerous bays and Physical 
harbors and giving to it a longer coastline than Europe 
Africa and South America combined. Again, Europe is well 
supplied with rivers, which are navigable for long distances. 
Another feature of European geography is the great extent of 
lowlands. Finally, the mountains of Europe are well provided 
with passes, thus affording convenient routes of communication 
from one country to another. 

Nearly all Europe lies in the northern half of the North 
Temperate Zone, that is, within those latitudes most conducive 
to the development of a high civilization. No- climatic 
where, except beyond the Arctic Circle, does ex- Europe 
treme cold stunt body and mind, and nowhere does excessive 
heat sap human energies. The climate is moderated by the 
Gulf Stream drift, which reaches the British Isles and Scan¬ 
dinavia. Climatic conditions are made still more favorable 
by the circumstance that Europe lies open to the west, with 
great inland seas penetrating deeply from the Atlantic, and 
with the higher mountain ranges extending nearly east and 
west. The westerly winds, warmed in passing over the Gulf 
Stream drift, can thus spread far into the interior, bringing 
with them an abundant rainfall, except in such regions as 
southern Spain, Italy, Greece, and eastern Russia. Europe, 
in consequence, is the only continent without extensive 
deserts. 

Europe, in general, has a fertile soil and a wide variety of 
products. Only the Arctic tundra and the slopes of the higher 
mountains are unadapted for either farming, Resources of 
grazing, or lumbering. Agriculture is still the most Europe 
important occupation. Wheat, rye, barley, and oats can be 
cultivated from the Mediterranean northward to the head of 
the Gulf of Bothnia, that is, nearer the pole in Europe than in 


92 


Greece 


any other part of the world. Southern Europe, in the latitude 
of the central United States, produces such tropical fruits as 
oranges, lemons, olives, and figs. Stock raising flourishes on 
the plains of Russia and Hungary. Many countries are heavily 
timbered, while deposits of coal and iron ore abound in the 
western part of the continent. These varied resources of 
Europe enable it to support a dense population. 

Europe contains more than 400,000,000 inhabitants — a 
fourth of mankind. The population of the continent seems to 
Population of have doubled since the opening of the nineteenth 
Europe century. The increase is partly due to improved 

sanitary conditions and the progress of scientific medicine, result¬ 
ing in a lower death rate, and partly to the greater production 
and importation of foodstuffs, virtually eliminating famine. 
The pressure of increased numbers has been to some extent re¬ 
lieved by the enormous emigration of Europeans, during the 
last one hundred years, to unoccupied or less thickly settled 
regions of the world. With the exception of certain invading 
peoples, such as the Mongols and the Turks, who came from 
Asia in the Middle Ages, the present inhabitants of Europe 
belong to the White Race. 

About sixty distinct languages are spoken in Europe. An¬ 
ciently, there were many more. The Turks in the Balkan Pen- 
European insula and the Mongols in Russia still keep their 

languages Asiatic tongues. The same is true of the Magyars 

(Hungarians), Esthonians, and Finns, who in other respects 
have been thoroughly Europeanized (§ 9). The remaining 
languages of any importance belong to the Indo-European 
family. 1 

The Pyrenees, Alps, and Balkans, stretching across Europe 
from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea, have formed an his- 
Northem and torica l dividing line, as well as a geographical 

southern barrier. Twenty-five centuries ago the European 

peoples dwelling north of these mountains had not 
entered the light of history. They were still barbarians. We 
hear little of them in ancient times, except as their occasional 

1 See the table, “Classification of Mankind,” on page 21. 



18,000 

16,000 

14,000 

12,000 

10,000 

8,000 

6,000 

4,000 

2,000 

0 


Mt. Blanc 

15.780 


Galdhopiggen 

8.400 


Alps 


The Great 
Lowland Plain 


ARCTIC 

OCEAN 


Mt. Elbruz 

18,476 

Caucasus 

Section along 
Line A-B. 

1 0° Meridian 

MEDITERRANEAN 
SEA 


rgi 




E 






































. 








. 


. 

. 


. 




f 




. 

' 





' 


. 












1 










































The Mediterranean Basin 


93 


migrations brought them into contact with the civilized Graeco- 
Latin peoples south of the mountains and along the Mediter¬ 
ranean. 

33. The Mediterranean Basin 

The Mediterranean, about twenty-two hundred miles in 
length and five hundred to six hundred miles in greatest breadth, 
is the most extensive inland sea in the world. It Character- 
washes the shores of three continents — Europe, Mediteira- 6 
Asia, and Africa. Nevertheless, its basin is nean basin 
relatively isolated, being confined within a mountain wall on the 
north and an almost impassable desert on the south. The 



climate of the basin falls halfway between tropical conditions 
and the temperate conditions of central and northern Europe. 
The sea exercises a moderating influence, however, raising the 
temperature in the rainy season (winter) and lowering it in the 
dry season (summer). The rainfall is, on the whole, scanty, 
with the result that the most important trees are the vine and the 
olive, which offer considerable resistance to drought. Their 
northern and southern limits, together with those of the orange, 
are shown on the accompanying map. 






















94 


Greece 


The Mediterranean was well suited for early commerce, 
because of its long and contracted shape, indented northern 
A “ highway shore, and numerous islands. Mariners seldom 
of nations ” had to proceed far from the sight of land or at a 
great distance from good harbors. Though its storms are 
often fierce, they are usually brief, since the Strait of Gibraltar 
shuts out the great waves of the Atlantic. Freedom from 
high tides also facilitates navigation. Such advantages made 
the Mediterranean from a remote period an avenue by which 
everything that the older Eastern world had to offer could 
be passed on to the younger West. The various European 
peoples themselves were also able to exchange their products 
and communicate their ideas and customs along this “highway 
of nations.” 

The Mediterranean basin divides into two parts. The boundary 
between them lies near the center, where Africa and Sicily almost 
Divisions of touch each other across a narrow strait. The 
the Mediter- western part contains, besides Sicily, the large 
ranean basm j s i an( j s 0 f Sardinia and Corsica. Between these 
islands and the Italian coast lies the wide expanse of the Tyr¬ 
rhenian Sea. The eastern part includes the Adriatic, Ionian, 
and yEgean seas. It was the last of these which had most 
importance in Greek history. 

A glance at the map shows that the ^Egean is almost land¬ 
locked. Only narrow passages lead northward to the Black 
The jEgean Sea, while on the south the long and narrow island 
Sea of Crete lies like a huge breakwater. Hundreds of 

smaller islands dot the surface of the yEgean, so many and so 
close together that they have always served as “stepping stones” 
between Greece and Asia Minor. 

Greece proper — continental Greece — is a tiny country. 
Its greatest length is scarcely more than two hundred and fifty 
Greece miles; its greatest breadth is only one hundred and 

eighty miles. Mountain ridges, offshoots of the 
Balkans, break it up into numberless small valleys and glens, 
which seldom widen into plains. The rivers are not navigable. 
The few lakes, hemmed in by the hills, have no outlets except 


Forerunners of the Greeks 


95 


in underground channels. The coastline is most irregular — a 
constant succession of sharp headlands and curving bays. 
No place in Greece is more than fifty miles from a mountain 
range or more than forty miles from some long arm of the 
Mediterranean. 

Greek history well illustrates the influence of geographical 
conditions on the life of 
a people. In the first 
place, mountain ranges 
cut up continental Greece 
into many Influence of 

small states, geographical 
„ _ ^_; , i conditions 

separated 

from one another by 
natural ramparts. The 

,, , n , A life-sized figure from the palace of Cnossus and 

result was that Greeks one Qf thg fi nes t examples of ancient Cretan art. 

loved most of all their 

own local independence and always refused to unite into one 
nation under a single government. In the second place, the near 
presence of the sea made sailors of the Greeks and led them 
to devote much energy to foreign commerce. They early felt, 
in consequence, the stimulating effects of intercourse with other 
peoples. And in the third place, the location of Greece at 
the threshold of Asia, with its best harbors and most numerous 
islands on the eastern coast, enabled the country to receive 
and profit by the culture of the Orient. Greece faced the civilized 
East. 



34. Forerunners of the Greeks 

The Greeks of historic times knew very little about their 
forerunners in the ^Egean region. Instead of accurate knowl¬ 
edge they had to depend on myths and legends, Antiquity of 
such as those preserved in the two epic poems called ^gean tiviii- 
the Iliad and the Odyssey. Modern excavations, 1 zatlon 
however, have revealed on the zEgean Islands and on the coasts 

1 Especially at Cnossus in Crete, Mycenae and Tiryns in Greece, and Troy in 
Asia Minor. See the map facing page 64. 


9 6 


Greece 


of Greece and western Asia Minor the remains of an extinct 
civilization which flourished at a remote period. This civiliza¬ 
tion was based on the metals — first copper and then bronze. 
It seems to have arisen as early as 3000 b.c., originally in Crete, 
whose inhabitants were at this period in close touch with the 
Near East, and from Crete it spread through¬ 
out the ^Egean. 

The iEgean peoples lived in villages and 
cities, where the frowning fortress of the 
chief or king looked down on the humble dwell¬ 
er t mgs of common men. The mon- 
istics of arch, as in Egypt and Babylonia, 

^gean was doubtless a thorough des- 

civilization . . . .. . 

pot, whose subjects toiled to 

build great palaces and tombs. If life was 
hard and cheerless for them, it must have 
been pleasant enough for court ladies and 
gentlemen, who occupied luxurious apart¬ 
ments, wore fine clothing and jewelry, and 
enjoyed such exhibitions as bullfights and the 
contests of pugilists. 

Remarkable progress took place in some of 
iEgean architects raised imposing 



long glove hanging from 
the stool and another 
in her lap. The date 
of the picture is about 
1400 B.C. 


Art 


A Cretan Woman 

From a fresco in the 
palace at Cnossus, 

Crete. A female figure ^ arts> 
is shown seated on a 

camp stool, with one palaces of hewn and squared stone and ar¬ 
ranged them for a life of comfort. 
The palace at Cnossus in Crete 
even had tile water-pipes, bathrooms, and other 
conveniences which have hitherto been re¬ 
garded as of recent origin. Brilliant wall paintings — hunting 
scenes, landscapes, portraits of men and women — excite our 
admiration. The costumes of the women, with their flounced 
skirts, puffed sleeves, low-cut bodices, and gloved hands, were 
astonishingly modern in appearance. yEgean artists made por¬ 
celain vases and decorated them with plant and animal forms. 
They carved ivory, engraved gems, and inlaid metals. It 
was doubtless from their yEgean forerunners that the Greeks 
inherited some of their artistic genius. 










Forerunners of the Greeks 


97 


A form of recording thoughts had been secured. The explora¬ 
tions in Crete show that its inhabitants had passed from pic¬ 
ture writing to sound writing. The palace of 
Cnossus contained several thousand clay tablets, 
with inscriptions in a language as yet unread (§ io). About 
seventy characters seem to have been in common use. They 
probably denote syllables and indicate a decided advance over 
both Egyptian and Babylonian scripts. 



Much commerce existed throughout the Mediterranean 
during ^Egean times. Products of Cretan art or imitations of 
them are found as far west as Italy, Sicily, Sar- 

. i * • Commerce 

dinia, and Spain, and as far east as inland Asia 
Minor, Syria, and Babylonia. Crete also enjoyed close com¬ 
mercial relations with both Egypt and Cyprus. In those 
ancient days Crete was mistress of the seas, and the merchants 
of that island preceded the Phoenicians as carriers between the 
Near East and Europe (§ 25). 














































9 8 


Greece 


vEgean civilization did not penetrate deeply into Europe. 
The interior of Greece still remained the home of barbarous 
Downfall of tribes, who had not yet learned to build cities, 

JE gean to create beautiful objects of art, or to traffic on 

civilization seas Between about 1500 and 1000 b.c. 

their destructive inroads brought about the downfall of ^Egean 
civilization. 

35 . The Greeks 

The barbarian invaders from the north were tall, light-com- 
plexioned, fair-haired, and blue-eyed, as are the inhabitants 
Greek of northern Europe to-day. Physically, they 

invaders offered a sharp contrast to the short-statured and 

dark-skinned iEgean peoples. Their speech was Greek, which 
belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. They lived 
a nomadic life as hunters and herdsmen. When the grasslands 
became insufficient to support their sheep and cattle, these 
northerners began to move gradually southward into the Danube 
Valley and thence through the many passes of the Balkans into 
Greece. The iron weapons which they possessed doubtless 
gave them a great advantage in conflicts with the bronze-using 
natives of this region. The invaders must have sometimes 
exterminated or enslaved the earlier inhabitants; more often, 
perhaps, they settled peacefully in the sunny south. Conquerors 
and conquered slowly intermingled, thus producing the one 
Greek people which is found at the dawn of history. 

The Greeks, as we shall now call them, did not stop at the 
southern limits of Greece. They also occupied Crete and the 
Greek other .Egean Islands, together with the western 

settlements coast of Asia Minor. Their Asiatic settlements 
came to be known as Eolis, Ionia, and Doris, after the names of 
Greek tribes. The entire basin of the Egean was henceforth 
the center of Greek life. 

Several hundred years elapsed between the end of Egean 
The Homeric civilization and the beginning of historic times 
Age in the Greek world, about 750 b.c. This period 

is usually known as the Homeric Age, because various aspects 


The Greeks 


99 


of it are reflected in the Iliad and the Odyssey. The former tells 
the story of a Greek expedition led by Agamemnon, king of 
Mycenae, against Troy; the latter relates the wanderings of 
the Greek hero Odysseus on his return from Troy. The two 
epics were probably composed in Ionia, and by the Greeks were 
attributed to a blind bard named Homer. Many modern 
scholars, however, regard them as the work of several genera¬ 
tions of poets. 

The Iliad and the Odyssey show how rude was the culture of 
the Homeric Age, as compared with the splendid ^Egean civili¬ 
zation which it displaced. 

The Greeks at this time 
had not wholly abandoned 
the life of Cultureof 
shepherds for the Homeric 
that of farm- Age 
ers. Wealth still consisted 
chiefly of flocks and herds. 

Nearly every freeman, 
however, owned a little 
plot of land on which he 
cultivated grain and cared 
for his orchard and vine¬ 
yard. Though iron was 
now used for weapons and 
farm implements, bronze 
continued to be the commoner and cheaper metal. Com¬ 
merce was little followed. People depended upon Phoenician 
merchants for articles of luxury which they could not pro¬ 
duce themselves. A class of skilled workmen had not arisen. 
There were no architects who could raise magnificent palaces 
and no artists who could paint or carve with the skill of 
their Tlgean predecessors. The backwardness of the Homeric 
Greeks is also indicated by their failure to develop a system 
of writing to replace the old Cretan script, which had utterly 
perished. 

Social life was very simple. Princes tended flocks and 



Woman Spinning 

From a vase painting 










IOO 


Greece 


built houses; princesses carried water and washed clothes. 
Agamemnon, Odysseus, and other heroes were not ashamed to 
Homeric be their own butchers and cooks. Coined money 
society was unknown. Values were reckoned in .oxen or 

in lumps of gold and silver. Warfare was constant and cruel. 



The Iliad and Odyssey show a considerable acquaintance with continental Greece and the 
coasts of Asia Minor. Cyprus, Egypt, Sicily, and Italy are also known to some extent. The 
poet imagines the earth as a sort of flat shield, with Greece lying in the center. The Mediterra¬ 
nean — “ The Sea,” as it is called by Homer — and the Black Sea divide the earth into two 
equal parts. “ The Ocean,” a river broad and deep, surrounded the earth, and beneath its 
surface lay Hades, the home of the dead. 


Piracy, flourishing upon the unprotected seas, ranked as an 
honorable occupation. Murders were frequent. The murderer 
had to dread, not a public trial and punishment, but rather the 
private vengeance of the kinsmen of the victim. On the other 
hand, both the Iliad and the Odyssey contain many charming 
descriptions of family life. “There is nothing mightier or 
nobler,” sings the poet, “than when man and wife are of one 
heart and mind in a house, a grief to their foes, to their friends 
great joy, but their own hearts know it best.” 1 


1 Odyssey, vi, 182-185. 









Greek Religion 

36 . Greek Religion 


IOI 


The Homeric Greeks and their successors worshiped various 
gods and goddesses, twelve of whom formed a select council. 
It was supposed to meet on snow-crowned Olympus ideas of 
in northern Thessaly. Many Olympian deities the s° ds 
seem to have been simply personifications of natural phe¬ 
nomena. Zeus, “ father of gods and men,” as Homer calls him, 
was a heaven god, who gathered the clouds in storms and hurled 
the thunderbolt. His brother, Poseidon, ruled the sea. His 
wife, Hera, presided over the life of women and especially over 
the sacred rites of marriage. His son, Apollo, a god of light, 
who warded off darkness and evil, became the ideal of manly 
beauty and the patron of music, poetry, and the healing art. 
Athena, a goddess who sprang full-grown from the forehead of 
Zeus, embodied the ideal of wisdom and all womanly virtues. 
These and other divinities were really magnified men and women, 
with human passions and appetites, but with more than human 
power and endowed with immortality. 

Greek ideas of the future life were dismal to an extreme. All 
men, it was thought, went down after death to ideas of the 
Hades and passed there a shadowy, joyless exist- future life 
ence. The Greek Hades thus closely resembled the Hebrew 
Sheol and the Babylonian underworld of the dead (§ 27). 

The Greeks believed that communications from the gods 
were received at certain places called oracles. The oldest of 
Greek oracles was that of Zeus at Dodona in ^ , 

Oracles 

Epirus. Here the priests professed to read the 
divine will in the rustling leaves of an oak tree sacred to Zeus. 
At Delphi in Phocis the god Apollo was supposed to speak 
through a prophetess. The words which she uttered when 
“possessed” by the deity were interpreted by the attendant 
priests and delivered to inquirers. The fame of the Delphic 
oracle spread throughout Greece and reached foreign lands. 
Every year great numbers of people visited Delphi. Statesmen 
wished to learn the fate of their political schemes; ambassadors 
sent by kings and cities asked advice as to weighty matters of 


102 


Greece 


peace and war; and colonists sought directions as to the best 
country in which to settle. The oracle lasted for over a 
thousand years. It was still honored at the close of the fourth 
century a.d., when a Roman emperor, 
after the adoption of Christianity, 

silenced it forever. 

The Greeks brought with them from 
their northern home a great love of 
The athletics. Their most fa- 

oiympian mous athletic festivals were 

games those in honor of Zeus at 

Olympia in Elis. The Olympian games 
took place every fourth year, in mid¬ 
summer. 1 A sacred truce was pro¬ 
claimed for an entire month, so that 
the thousands of spectators from every 
part of the Greek world might arrive 
and depart in safety. No one not of 
Greek blood and no one convicted of 
crime might be a competitor. The 
games occupied five days, beginning with 
contests in running. There was a short- 
distance dash through the length of the 
stadium, a quarter-mile race, and also a 
longer race, probably for two or three 
miles. Then followed a contest consist¬ 
ing of five events: the long jump, hurling 
the discus, throwing the javelin, running, 
and wrestling. Other contests included 
boxing, horse races, and chariot races. 
The Olympian games were religious in character, because the 
Influence of display of manly strength was thought to be a 
the Olympian spectacle most pleasing to the gods. The win¬ 
ning athlete received only a wreath of wild olive at 
Olympia, but at home he enjoyed the gifts and reverence of his 

1 The first recorded celebration of the games occurred in 776 b.c., and from this 
year all Greek dates were reckoned. 



The Discus Thrower 

Lancelotti Palace, Rome 
Marble copy of the bronze 
original by Myron, a sculptor 
of the fifth century b.c. Found 
in 1781 on the Esquiline Hill, 
Rome. The statue represents 
a young man, perhaps an ath¬ 
lete at the Olympian games, 
who is bending forward to hurl 
the discus. His body is thrown 
violently to the left with a 
twisting action that brings 
every muscle into play. 



HERMES AND DIONYSUS 
Museum of Olympia 

An original statue by the great sculptor, Praxiteles. It was found in 1877 a.d. at Olympia. 
Hermes is represented carrying the child Dionysus, whom Zeus had intrusted to his care. 
The symmetrical body of Hermes is faultlessly modeled; the poise of his head is full of dignity; 
his expression is refined and thoughtful. Manly strength and beauty have never been better 
embodied than in this work. 








THE APHRODITE OF MELOS 
Louvre, Paris 

More commonly known as the “Venus of Milo.” The statue was discovered in 1820 
A. D. on the island of Melos. It consists of two principal pieces, joined together across 
the folds of the drapery. Most art critics date this work about 100 b. c. The strong, 
serene figure of the goddess sets forth the Greek ideal of female loveliness. 





The Greek City-States 


io 3 


fellow citizens. The thousands of visitors at the festival gave to 
it the character of a great fair, where merchants set up their 
shops and money changers their tables. Poets recited their 
lines before admiring audiences, and artists exhibited their 
masterpieces. Heralds read treaties recently framed between 
Greek cities, in order to have them widely known. Orators 
spoke on subjects of general interest. The Olympian games thus 
did much to preserve a sense of fellowship among Greek com¬ 
munities. 

The strongest tie uniting the Greeks was their beautiful and 
expressive language. It is not a “dead” language, for it still 
lives in modified form on the lips of modern Greeks Bonds of 
in the Balkan Peninsula. Greek literature also union among 
made for unity. The Iliad and the Odyssey were the Greeks 
recited in every Greek village and city for centuries. They 
formed the principal textbook in the schools; an Athenian 
philosopher well calls Homer the “educator” of Greece. Reli¬ 
gion provided still another tie, for all Greeks worshiped the same 
Olympian gods, visited the oracles at Dodona and Delphi, and 
attended the Olympian games. A common language, literature, 
and religion were cultural bonds of union; they did not lead to 
the political unification of the Greek world. 

37 . The Greek City-States 

A Greek city included not only the area within its walls, but 
also the surrounding district, where many citizens lived. Being 

independent and self-governing, it is properly 

„ \ . T ° - . * , ii The city-state 

called a city-state. It could declare war, conclude 

treaties, and make alliances with its neighbors, just as is done 

by any modern country. Such city-states were not large. 

Athens, at the climax of her power, may have had a quarter of 

a million inhabitants; 1 Thebes, Argos, and Corinth, the next 

largest places, probably had between fifty and one hundred 

thousand; Sparta probably had less than fifty thousand. These 

1 Living not only in Athens itself and its port of Piraeus, but also throughout 
Attica. 


104 


Greece 


figures include all classses of the population — citizens, slaves, 
and resident foreigners. 

The citizens were very closely associated. They believed 
themselves to be descended from a common ancestor and they 
shared a common worship of the patron god or 
hero who had them under his protection. These 
ties of supposed kinship and religion made citizenship a privi¬ 
lege which a person enjoyed only by birth and which he lost 
by removal to another city-state. Elsewhere he was only a 
foreigner lacking legal rights — a man without a country. 

Religious influences sometimes proved strong enough to 
produce loose federations of tribes or city-states known as 
Amphicty- amphictyonies. The people living around a famous 
onies sanctuary would meet to observe their festivals in 

common and to guard the shrine of their divinity. One of these 
local unions arose on the little island of Delos, the reputed 
birthplace of Apollo. A still more noteworthy example was the 
Delphic Amphictyony. It included twelve tribes and cities 
of central Greece and Thessaly. They established a council 
which took the temple of Apollo at Delphi under its protection 
and superintended the athletic games held there in honor of 
the god. 

The Iliad and the Odyssey , which give us our first view of the 
Greek city-state, also contain the earliest account of its govern- 
Government ment - Each city-state had a king, “the shepherd 
of the of the people,” as Homer calls him. The king 

did not possess absolute authority, as in the Near 
East (§ 22); he was more or less controlled by a council of 
nobles. They helped him in judgment and sacrifice, followed 
him to war, and filled the principal offices. Both king and 
nobles were obliged to consult the common people on matters of 
great importance, such as making war or declaring peace. The 
citizens would then be summoned to meet in the market-place, 
where they shouted assent to the proposals laid before them 
or showed disapproval by silence. This public assembly had 
little importance in Homeric times, but later it became the 
center of Greek democracy. 


The Greek City-States 


IC> 5 

Many city-states, after the opening of the historic era in 
Greece, changed their form of government. In some of them, 
for example, Thebes and Corinth, the nobles became 
strong enough to abolish the kingship altogether, development 
Monarchy, the rule of one, thus gave way to aristoc- °. f the 
racy, the rule of the nobles. In Sparta and Argos the Clty State 
kings were not driven out, but their authority was much lessened. 
Some city-states came under the control of usurpers, whom the 
Greeks called “tyrants.” A tyrant was a man who gained 
supreme power by force or guile and governed for his own benefit 
without regard to the laws. Still other city-states, of which 
Athens formed the most conspicuous instance, went through an 
entire cycle of changes from kingship to aristocracy, thence to 
tyranny, and finally to democracy, or popular rule. 

The city-states most prominent in Greek history were Sparta 
and Athens. Sparta had been founded at a remote period by 
Greek invaders of southern Greece (the Pelopon¬ 
nesus). It conquered some of the neighboring 
communities and entered into alliance with others, so that by 
500 b.c. its power extended over the greater part of the Pelopon¬ 
nesus. The Spartans were certainly good soldiers, but they 
were little more. They had no industries of importance, cared 
nothing for commerce, and lived upon the produce of their 
farms, which were worked by serfs. The Spartans never 
created anything worth while in literature, art, or philosophy. 
When not fighting, they passed their time in military drill and 
warlike exercises. Their government was a monarchy in form, 
but since there were always two kings reigning at once, neither 
could become very powerful. The real management of affairs 
lay in hands of five men, called ephors, who were elected every 
year by the citizens. The ephors accompanied the kings in 
war and directed their actions; guided the deliberations of the 
council of nobles and public assembly; superintended the edu¬ 
cation of children; and exercised a paternal oversight of every¬ 
body’s private life. Nowhere else in the Greek world was the 
welfare of the individual so thoroughly subordinated to the 
interests of the society of which he formed a unit. 


io6 


Greece 


The city-state of Athens stood in marked contrast to Sparta. 
Athens, by 500 b.c., had rid itself of kings and tyrants, had 

. overthrown the power of the nobles, and had 

created the first really democratic government in 
antiquity. We shall describe later this Athenian democracy 
and set forth, also, some of the contributions of the Athenian 
genius to the artistic and intellectual life of mankind. 

38. Colonial Expansion of Greece 

The Greeks, with the sea at their doors, naturally became 
sailors, traders, and colonizers. After the middle of the eighth 
Age of century b.c., the city-states began to plant nu- 

colonization merous settlements along the shores of the Medi¬ 

terranean and the Black Sea. The great age of colonization 
covered about two hundred and fifty years. 1 

Trade was one motive for colonization. The Greeks, like 
the Phoenicians, were able to realize large profits by exchanging 
Motives for their manufactured goods for the food and raw 
colonization materials of other countries. Land hunger was 
another motive. The poor soil of Greece could not support 
many inhabitants, and, as population increased, emigration 
offered the only means of relieving the pressure of numbers. A 
third motive was political and social unrest. The city-states 
at this period contained many men of adventurous disposition, 
who were ready to seek in foreign lands a refuge from the op¬ 
pression of nobles or tyrants. They hoped to find abroad more 
freedom than they had at home. 

A Greek colony was not simply a trading-post; it was a 
center of Greek life. The colonists continued to be Greeks in 
Nature of language, customs, and religion; they called them- 
colonization selves “men away from home.” Mother city and 
daughter colony traded with each other and in time of danger 
helped each other. The sacred fire carried from the public 
hearth of the old community to the new settlement formed a 
symbol of the close ties binding them together. 


1 See the map facing page 74. 




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Colonial Expansion of Greece 


107 


The Greeks established many colonies along the coast of the 
northern ^Egean and on both sides of the passages leading into 
the Black Sea. Their most important settlement Co i onies in 
here was Byzantium, upon the site where Con- the north 
stantinople now stands. The colonies which and northeast 
fringed the Black Sea were centers for the supply of fish, wood, 
wool, grain, meats, and slaves. The large profits to be gained 
by trade made the Greeks willing to live in what was then a wild 
and inhospitable region. 




An Athenian Trireme 


Bas-relief found on the Acropolis of Athens. Dates from about 400 b.c. The part of the 
relief preserved shows the waist of the vessel, with the uppermost of the three banks of 
rowers. Only the oars of the two lower banks are seen. 


The Greeks could feel more at home in southern Italy, where 
the genial climate, clear air, and sparkling sea recalled their 
native land. They made so many settlements in colonies 
this region that it came to be known as Great ln the west 
Greece (Magna Gracia). One of these was Cumae, on the 
coast just north of the Bay of Naples. Emigrants from Cumse, 
in turn, built the city of Naples ( Neapolis ), which in Roman 
times formed a center of Greek culture and even to-day possesses 
a large Greek population. Other important colonies in southern 
Italy included Taranto, 1 Reggio, 2 and Messina. 3 The most 
important colony in Sicily was Syracuse, established by Corinth. 
The Greeks were not able to expand over all Sicily, owing to the 
opposition of the Carthaginians, who had numerous possessions 
at its western extremity. 


Ancient Tarentum. 


2 Ancient Regium. 


Ancient Messana. 







io 8 


Greece 


The Greeks were also prevented by the Carthaginians from 
gaining much of a foothold in Corsica and Sardinia and on the 
other Medi- coast Spain. The city of Marseilles ( Massilia ), 
terranean at the mouth of the Rhone, was the chief Greek 

colonies settlement in this part of the Mediterranean. Two 

colonies in the southeastern corner of the Mediterranean were 
Cyrene, west of Egypt, and Naucratis, in the Delta of the Nile. 
Many Greek travelers now visited Egypt to see the wonders of 
that strange old country. Greek colonies were also established 
in Cyprus and along the southern coast of Asia Minor. 

Greek colonial expansion formed one of the most significant 
movements in ancient history, because it spread Greek culture 
Results of over so many lands. To distinguish themselves 
colonization from the foreigners, or “barbarians,” about them, 
the Greeks began to give themselves the common name of 
Hellenes. Hellas, their country, came to include all the terri¬ 
tory possessed by Hellenic peoples. The Greeks, henceforth, 
were no longer confined within the narrow limits of the ^Egean. 
Wherever rose a Greek city, there was a scene of Greek history. 


39. Greece and Persia 

The history of Greece for many centuries had been uneventful 
— a history of the uninterrupted expansion of Greek peoples 
The perils over “barbarian” lands. Their civilization, spread 

of Greece by colonization and commerce, promised to pene¬ 

trate every region of the Mediterranean. This situation 
changed after the middle of the sixth century b.c. The creation 
of the Persian Empire (§ 22) reacted almost at once upon the 
Greek world. Cyrus the Great, who founded the power of 
Persia, carried his victorious arms throughout Asia Minor, thus 
becoming overlord of the Ionian and other Greek communities 
on the shores of the ^Egean (§35). His son, Cambyses, conquered 
the island of Cyprus and after subduing Egypt proceeded to add 
Cyrene and other Greek colonies in Africa to the Persian domin¬ 
ions. The entire coast of the eastern Mediterranean came in 
this way under the control of a single, powerful, and aggressive 
state. 


Greece and Persia 


109 


The accession of Darius I (Darius the Great) to the throne 
of Persia only increased the dangers that overshadowed the 
Greek world. Darius desired to secure his posses- conquests of 
sions on the northwest by extending them as far Darius 
as the Danube River, which would furnish an admirable frontier. 
Accordingly, he entered Europe with a large army and marched 
against the barbarous but warlike Scythians, then living on both 
sides of the lower Danube. This enterprise was apparently a 



British Museum, London 

The king in his chariot is hunting lions in a grove of palms. Ahura Mazda, the Persian 
supreme god, appears above. The inscription gives the titles of Darius I in three languages. 


great success. After the return of Darius to Asia, his lieutenants 
conquered the Greek settlements on the northern shore of the 
Dardanelles and the Bosporus, together with the wild tribes of 
Thrace and Macedonia. The Persian Empire now included a 
considerable part of the Balkan Peninsula as far as Greece. 

Not long after the European expedition of Darius, the Ionian 
cities of Asia Minor revolted against Persia. The Ionians sought 
the help of Sparta, the chief military state of The Ionian 

Greece. The Spartans refused to take part in the Revolt, 

499—493 B C 

war, but the Athenians, who realized the menace 
to Greece from the Persian advance, aided the Ionians with 
both ships and soldiers. The allied forces captured and de¬ 
stroyed Sardis, the chief city of the Persians in Asia Minor. 
The rest of the Asiatic Greeks now joined the Ionians, and even 









no 


Greece 


Thrace threw off the Persian yoke. These successes were only 
temporary. The revolting cities, unable to hold out against 
the vast resources possessed by the Great King, again fell one 
by one into his hands. 

Quiet had no sooner been restored in Asia Minor than Darius 
First Persian made ready to reassert Persian supremacy in the 
expedition Balkan Peninsula and to punish Athens for her 
share in the Ionian Revolt. Only the first part of this program 
was carried out. A large army, 
commanded by Mardonius, the son- 
in-law of the Persian monarch, soon 
reconquered Thrace and received the 
submission of Macedonia. Mardo¬ 
nius could not proceed farther, how¬ 
ever, because the Persian fleet, on 
which his army depended for sup¬ 
plies, was wrecked off the promon¬ 
tory of Mount Athos. 

The partial failure of the first Per¬ 
sian expedition only aroused Darius 
Second t° renewed exertions. 

Persian Two years later another 

expedition fleet, bearing perhaps 

twenty thousand soldiers, set out 
from Ionia to Greece. Datis and 
Artaphernes, the Persian leaders, 
sailed straight across the ^Egean 
and landed on the plain of Mara¬ 
thon, twenty-six miles from Athens. 

The situation of the Athenians seemed desperate. They had 
scarcely ten thousand men with whom to face an army at least 
Battle of twice as large and hitherto invincible. The Spar¬ 
tans promised support, but delayed sending troops 
at the critical moment. Nevertheless, the Athenians 
decided to take the offensive. Their able general, Miltiades, 
believed that the Persians, however numerous, were no match for 
heavy-armed Greek soldiers. The issue of the battle of Mara- 



Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 

A painting on an Attic vase of 
about 400 b.c. The barbarian wears 
a tall cap with lappets which could be 
fastened under the chin. His under¬ 
garments are of chequer-pattern, with 
sleeves and trousers. Over these he 
wears a tunic, gathered in at the 
waist. 


Marathon, 
490 B.C. 





Greece and Persia 


hi 


thon proved him right. The Athenians crossed the plain at the 
quickstep and in the face of a shower of arrows drove the Per¬ 
sians to their ships. Datis and Artaphernes then sailed for 
home, with their errand of vengeance unfulfilled. 



“Ten years after Marathon,” says a Greek historian, “the 
‘barbarians’ returned with the vast armament which was to 
enslave Greece.” 1 Darius was now dead, but his Third Persian 
son Xerxes had determined to complete his task, expedition 
Great quantities of provisions were collected; the Dardanelles 
strait was bridged with boats; and the promontory of Mount 
Athos, where a previous fleet had met shipwreck, was pierced 
with a canal. An army, estimated to exceed one hundred 

1 Thucydides, i, 18. 




























11 2 


Greece 


thousand men, was brought together from all parts of the Great 
King’s realm. He evidently intended to crush the Greeks by 
sheer weight of numbers. 

Xerxes did not have to attack a united Greece. Some Greek 
states submitted without fighting, when Persian heralds came 
- ' to demand “earth and 

water,” the customary 
Disunion of symbols of 
the Greeks submission. 

Some other states re¬ 
mained neutral through¬ 
out the struggle. But 
Athens and Sparta, with 
their allies, remained joined 
for resistance to the end. 

Early in the year 480 
b.c. the Persian host moved 
out of Sardis, crossed the 
Dardanelles, and advanced 
as far as the Pass of 
Thermopylae, commanding 

Battle of entrance 

Thermopylae, into central 
480 B.c. Greece. This 
position, one of great nat¬ 
ural strength, was held by 
a few thousand Greeks 
under the Spartan king, 
Leonidas. Xerxes for two 
days hurled his best troops against the defenders of Ther¬ 
mopylae, only to find that numbers did not avail in that nar¬ 
row defile. There is no telling how long the handful of Greeks 
might have resisted, had not the Persians found a road over 
the mountain in the rear of the pass. Leonidas and his men 
were now attacked both in front and from behind. Xerxes at 
length won the pass — but only over the bodies of its heroic 
defenders. A monument to their memory was afterward raised 



Persian Archers 

Louvre, Paris 

A frieze of enameled brick from the royal palace 
at Susa. It is a masterpiece of Persian art and 
shows the influence of both Assyrian and Greek 
design. Each archer carries a spear, in addition to 
the bow over the left shoulder and the quiver on 
the back. These soldiers probably served as palace 
guards, hence the fine robes worn by them. 

















Greece and Persia 


ii3 

on the field of battle. It bore the simple inscription: “Stran¬ 
ger, go tell the Spartans that we lie here in obedience to their 
commands.” 1 

The Persians now marched rapidly through central Greece to 
Athens, but found a deserted city. Upon the advice of Themis- 
tocles, ablest of the Athenian leaders, the non- Battle of 
combatants had withdrawn to places of safety Saiamis, 
and the entire fighting force of Athens had gone 480 B C ‘ 
on shipboard. The Greek fleet, which consisted chiefly of 
Athenian vessels under the command of Themistocles, then 
took up a position in the strait separating the island of Saiamis 
from Attica and awaited the enemy. The Persians at Saiamis 
had many more ships than the Greeks, but Themistocles believed 
that in the narrow strait their numbers would be a disadvan¬ 
tage to them. Such turned out to be the case. The Persians 
fought well, but their vessels, crowded together, could not 
navigate properly and even wrecked one another by collision. 
After an all-day contest what remained of their fleet withdrew 
to iVsia Minor. The Great King himself had no heart for any 
more fighting. However, he left Mardonius, with a large body 
of picked troops, to subjugate the Greeks on land. The real 
crisis of the war was yet to come. 

Mardonius passed the winter quietly in Thessaly, preparing 
for the spring campaign. The Greeks, in their turn, made a 
final effort. A Spartan army, supported by the Battles of 
Athenians and other allies, met the enemy near Mycale, and 
the little town of Plataea in Boeotia. The Greek 479 B.c. 
soldiers, with their long spears, huge shields, and heavy swords, 
were completely successful. At about the same time as this 
battle the remainder of the Persian fleet suffered a crushing 
defeat at Mycale, on the Ionian coast. These two engagements 
practically ended the contest. 

The Persian wars were much more than a struggle for su¬ 
premacy between two rival powers. They were victorious 
a struggle between East and West; between Orien- Greece 
tal despotism and Occidental democracy. Had Persia won, 

1 Herodotus, vii, 228. 


Greece 


114 

the fresh, vigorous Western civilization then being developed 
by Athens and other Greek states would have been submerged, 
perhaps for ages, under the influx of Eastern ideas and customs. 
The Greek victory saved Europe for better things. It was a 
victory for human freedom. 

40. Athens Mistress of the JEgean 

Greek history for many years after the Persian wars centered 
about Athens, whose citizens had done most to resist the armies 
Athens and an d nav ies of the Great King. In order to remove 
the Delian the danger of another attack from Persia, the 
League Athenians formed a defensive league with their 

Greek kindred in Asia Minor and on the ^Egean Islands. It 
included, finally, over two hundred city-states. Some of the 
wealthier members agreed to provide ships and crews for the 
allied fleet. All the other members made their contributions 
in money, allowing Athens to build and equip the ships. Athe¬ 
nian officials collected the revenues, which were placed for 
protection in the temple of Apollo on the island of Delos. 

The Delian League formed the most promising step which 
the Greeks had yet taken in the direction of federal government. 
Athenian It might have developed into a United States of 
imperialism Greece, but the Athenians preferred to convert it 
into an empire. They used the naval force that had been 
formed by the contributions of the league as a means of 
bringing its members into dependence on Athens. The Delian 
communities were compelled to accept governments like those 
of Athens, to endure the presence of Athenian garrisons in their 
midst, to furnish soldiers for Athenian armies, and to pay an 
annual tribute. Even the common treasury of the league was 
transferred from Delos to Athens. What had started out as a 
voluntary association of free and independent states thus ended 
by becoming, to all intents and purposes, an Athenian Empire. 
The accompanying map shows how extensive it was about 
the middle of the fifth century b.c. 

The Athenians governed imperially, but they belonged to a 
democratic state. Democracy, the rule of the sovereign people, 


CO 

05 O 


00 o 

































































































































' 























































































































































Athens Mistress of the ^Egean 


ii 5 

was unknown in the Near East (§ 22 ). It formed a Greek con¬ 
tribution, especially an Athenian contribution, to civilization. 
The Athenians had now learned how unjust could Athenian 
be the rule of a king, a tyrant, or a privileged aris- democracy 
tocracy. They tried, instead, to afford every free citizen, 
whether rich or poor, whether noble or commoner, an oppor¬ 
tunity to hold office, to serve in the law courts, and to take part 
in legislation. 



Both Athens and its port of Piraeus were surrounded by massive fortifications. The Long 
Walls shown on the map ran parallel to each other, but far enough apart to inclose a wide 
road along which troops and supplies could be brought from the port to the city. A third 
wall ran to the eastern extremity of the Bay of Phalerum. 

The center of Athenian democracy was the popular assembly. 
All citizens who had reached twenty years of age were members. 
The number present at a meeting rarely exceeded The popular 
five thousand, however, because so many Athe- assembly 
nians lived outside the walls in the country districts of Attica. 
The popular assembly met every eight or nine days on the 
slopes of a hill called the Pnyx. The people listened to speeches 
and then voted, usually by show of hands, on the measures laid 
before them. They settled in this way all questions of war and 
peace, sent out military and naval expeditions, authorized public 










n6 


Greece 


expenditures, and exercised general control over the affairs 
of Athens and her dependencies. 

This sort of democracy worked well in the conduct of a small 
city-state. It proved to be less successful in the management 
No repre- an em Pi re - The subject communities of the 

sentative Delian League were unrepresented at Athens, 

system They had no one to speak for them in the public 

assembly or before the law courts. Their interests, therefore, 
were always put below those of the Athenians. We shall notice 
the same absence of a representative system in ancient Rome, 
after that city had become mistress of the Mediterranean basin. 

Even in Athens, most democratic of all Greek city-states, 
democracy was really class rule. Not all the free men — 

to say nothing of the numerous slaves — were 

Q ass rule J 0 

citizens. The law restricted citizenship to those 
free men who were the sons of an Athenian father (himself a 
citizen) and an Athenian mother. The thousands of foreign 
merchants and artisans living in Athens were thus excluded 
from any part in its government. This jealous attitude toward 
foreigners contrasts with the liberal policy of modern countries, 
such as our own, in naturalizing immigrants. 

Athens contained many artisans. Their daily tasks gave 
them scant opportunity to engage in the exciting game of 
Industrial politics. The average rate of wages was very low. 
Athens j n S pite of cheap food and modest requirements 

for clothing and shelter, it must have been difficult for the city 
workman to keep body and soul together. Outside of Athens 
lived the peasants, whose little farms produced the olives, 
grapes, and figs for which Attica was celebrated. There were 
also thousands of slaves in Athens, as in other city-states of 
Greece. Their number was so great and their labor so cheap 
that we may think of them as taking the place of modern 
machines. Slaves did most of the work on large estates owned 
by wealthy men, toiled in the mines and quarries, and served 
as oarsmen on ships. The system of slavery lowered the 
dignity of free labor and tended to prevent the rise of 
poorer citizens to positions of responsibility. In Greece, as 


Athens Mistress of the iEgean 117 


in the Near East (§23), slavery cast a blight over industrial 
life. 



The wealth which the Athenians accumulated by trade and 
industry, together with the tribute paid by the Delian League, 
enabled them to Artistic 
adorn their city Athens 
with statues and buildings. 

The most beautiful monu¬ 
ments arose on the Acropolis. 

Access to this steep rock was 
gained through a superb en¬ 
trance gate, or Propylaea, con¬ 
structed to resemble the front 
of a temple with columns and 
pediment. A huge bronze 
statue of the goddess Athena, 
by the sculptor Phidias, stood 
just beyond the Propylaea. 

The crest of the Acropolis 
contained two temples. The 
larger one, dedicated to the 
Virgin Athena — Athena Par- 
thenos, — contained a gold 
and ivory statue (also by 
Phidias) of the goddess who 
had the Athenian city under 
her protection. The Par¬ 
thenon, because of its perfec¬ 
tion of construction and ad¬ 
mirable proportions, is justly regarded as an architectural mas¬ 
terpiece. 

Athens at this time was the center of Greek intellectual life. 
The greatest poets, historians, philosophers, and orators of 
Greece were Athenians, either by birth or training. The “ school 
There is no exaggeration, consequently, in the of Hellas ” 
proud words which the statesman Pericles applied to Athens 
in the fifth century b.c. : “Our city is equally admirable in 


Pericles 

British Museum, London 
The bust is probably a good copy of a por¬ 
trait statue set up on the Athenian Acropolis 
during the lifetime of Pericles. 


Greece 


118 


peace and in war. We are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in 
our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness. 
Wealth we employ, not for talk and ostentation, but when there 
is a real use for it. To acknowledge poverty with us is no dis¬ 
grace; the true disgrace is in doing nothing to avoid it. An 
Athenian citizen does not neglect the state because he takes care 
of his own household; and even those of us who are engaged in 
business have a very fair idea of politics. We alone regard a 
man who shows no interest in public affairs, not as a harmless, 
but as a useless, character. ... In short, Athens is the school 
of Hellas.” 1 

41 . Decline of the Greek City-States 

The patriotic Greeks, during the Persian wars, achieved a 
temporary union and fought valiantly, successfully, in a common 
Disunion of cause. When all danger from Persia was removed, 
the Greeks it became impossible to continue a working system 
of federation. The old hostility between rival communities 
arose again in full vigor. The Greek people, whose unity of 
blood, language, religion, and customs should have welded them 
into one nation, continued to be divided into independent and 
often hostile city-states. 

The history of Greece, after the Persian wars, is therefore a 
record of almost ceaseless conflict. In 431 b.c. the fierce and 
Conflicts exhausting Peloponnesian War broke out between 

between the Athens and Sparta, with their allies and depend¬ 
encies. After ten years of fighting without a 
decisive result, both sides grew weary of the struggle and 
made peace. Athens, instead of husbanding her resources 
for another contest with Sparta, then tried to conquer Syra¬ 
cuse, the largest Greek city in Sicily. The failure of the Sicilian 
expedition so weakened Athens that Sparta felt encouraged to 
renew the Peloponnesian War, this time with the financial help 
of Persia, who was always ready to subsidize the Greeks in 
fighting one another. The Peloponnesian War ended in 404 
b.c. with the complete triumph of Sparta. That city played 

1 Thucydides, ii, 39-41. 


Propylaea 

ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS (Restoration) 



Erectheum Statue of Athena Parthenon 























































Propylaea Erechtheum Parthenon Mt. Lycabettus 



ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS FROM THE SOUTHWEST 















Decline of the Greek City-States 


119 

the imperial role for a few years, until her harsh military rule 
goaded Thebes into revolt. By defeating Sparta, Thebes be¬ 
came the chief power in Greece. Athens and Sparta, however, 
joined forces to make headway against Theban dominion, and 
this, too, went down bloodily on the field of battle. It had be¬ 
come evident by the middle of the fourth century b.c. that no 
single city-state was strong enough or wise enough to rule Greece. 

A new influence now began to be felt 
in the Greek world — the influence of 
Macedonia. Its people were 
an offshoot of those northern Macedoma 
invaders who had entered the Balkan 
Peninsula before the dawn of history 
(§35). They were thus Greek in both 
blood and language, but less civilized than 
their kinsmen of central and southern 
Greece. Macedonia, however, formed a 
territorial state under a single ruler, in 
contrast to the disunited city-states of the 
other Greeks. 

Philip II, one of the most remark¬ 
able men of antiquity, became king of 
Macedonia in 359 b.c. He was not a 
stranger to Greece. Part of his boy¬ 
hood had been passed as Philip 11 , 
a hostage at Thebes, where 359 “ 333 B.c. 
he learned the art of war as the Greeks most exquisite Greek head 

known to us. 

had perfected it and also gained an insight 
into Greek politics. The distracted condition of Greece offered 
Philip an opportunity to secure for Macedonia the position 
of supremacy which neither Athens, Sparta, nor Thebes had 
held for long. He seized the opportunity. 

Philip created a permanent or standing army of professional 

soldiers and improved their methods of fighting. Hitherto, 

battles had been mainly between massed bodies of 

. . . . M -r *ii Philip’s army 

infantry, forming a phalanx. Philip retained the 

phalanx, only he deepened it and gave to the rear men longer 




A Silver Coin of 
Syracuse 

The profile of the nymph 
Arethusa has been styled the 




120 


Greece 


Demosthenes 


spears. The business of the phalanx was to keep the front of 
the opposing army engaged, while horsemen rode into the 
enemy’s flanks. This reliance on masses of cavalry to win a 
victory was something new in warfare. 
Another novel feature consisted in the use 
on the battlefield of catapults, a kind of 
artillery able to throw darts and huge 
stones into the enemy’s ranks. All these 
different arms working together made a 
war machine which was the most formi¬ 
dable in the ancient world until the days 
of the Roman legion. 

Philip’s conquests in northern Greece- 
excited mixed feelings at Athens, Thebes, 
and Sparta. He had many 
influential friends in these 
cities, some paid agents, but others honest 
men who favored Macedonian headship 
as the only means of uniting Greece. 
Those opposed to Philip found their fore¬ 
most representative in the famous Athe¬ 
nian orator, Demosthenes. His patriotic 
a copy of the bronze original imagination had been fired by the great 

by the sculptor Polyeuctus. , . . . . - . .. , 1 

The work, when found, was deeds which free Greeks once accomplished 

considerably mutilated and against Persia. Athens he loved with 

has been restored in numer- . . . _ 

ous parts. Both forearms and passionate-devotion, and Athens, he urged, 

the hands holding the scroll should become the leader of Greece in a 

are modern additions. It .. f . - - 

seems likely that the original second war for independence. 

Athenian statue showed De- q^he stirring appeals of Demosthenes 

mosthenes with tightly clasped , 

hands, which, with his fur- met little response, until Philip entered 

rowed visage and contracted central Greece at the head of 

brows, were expressive of the 01 

orator’s earnestness and con- Chaeronea, hlS army. Athens, Thebes, 
centration of thought. 338 B.c. and some Peloponnesian 

states then formed a defensive alliance against him. The 
decisive battle took place at Chaeronea, in Boeotia. On that 
fatal field the well-drilled and seasoned troops of Macedonia, 
led by a master of the art of war, overcame the citizen-soldiers 



■mil 

Demosthenes 
Vatican Museum, Rome 
A marble statue, probably 





I 21 


Alexander and the Conquest of Persia 

of Greece. The victory made Philip master of all the Greek 
states, except Sparta, which still preserved her liberty. It 
was the victory of an absolute monarchy over free, self-govern¬ 
ing commonwealths. The city-states had had their day. They 
never again became first-rate powers in history. 

Philip’s restless energy now 
drove him forward to the next 
step in his ambi- After 
tious program. Chaeronea 
He determined to carry out the 
plans, long cherished by the 
Greeks, for the conquest of 
Asia Minor and perhaps even 
of Persia. A congress of the 
Greek states, which met at 
Corinth, voted to supply ships 
and soldiers for the undertak¬ 
ing and placed Philip in com¬ 
mand of the Graeco-Macedo¬ 
nian army. Philip did not lead 
it into Asia. Less than two 
years after Chaeronea he was 
struck down by an assassin, 
and the scepter passed to his son, Alexander. 

42. Alexander the Great and the Conquest of Persia 

Alexander became king of Macedonia when only twenty 
years old. He had his father’s vigorous body, keen mind, 
and resolute will. His mother, a proud, ambitious The youth- 
woman, told him that the blood of Achilles ran in ful Alexander 
his veins, and bade him imitate the deeds of that Greek hero. 
We know that he learned the Iliad by heart and always carried a 
copy of it on his campaigns. The youthful Alexander developed 
into a splendid athlete, skillful in all the sports of his rough¬ 
riding companions, and trained in every warlike exercise. 
Alexander was also well educated. He had Aristotle, the most 



Alexander the Great 

After a medallion found at Tarsus in 
Asia Minor. 



122 


Greece 


learned man in Greece, as his tutor. The influence of that 
philosopher, in inspiring him with an admiration for Greek 
civilization, remained with him throughout life. 

The Persian Empire had remained almost intact since the 
time of Darius the Great. It was a huge, loosely knit collection 
Alexander man y different peoples, whose sole bond of 

and the union consisted in their allegiance to the Great 

King. Its resources in men and wealth were 
enormous. Events proved, however, that it could offer no 
effective resistance to a Graeco-Macedonian army. With not 



The Alexander Mosaic 


Naples Museum 

This splendid mosaic, composed of pieces of colored glass, formed the pavement of a floor 
in a Roman house at Pompeii, Italy. It Was probably a copy of an earlier Greek painting. 
Alexander (on horseback at the left) is shown leading the cavalry charge against Darius III 
at the battle of Issus. The Great King wears the characteristic Persian headdress, with 
cheek pieces fastening under the chin. The royal charioteer (behind the king) lashes his 
horses, in order that Darius may escape. Persian nobles, meanwhile, are fighting desperately 
about their lord. 


more than fifty thousand soldiers, Alexander destroyed an 
empire before which for two centuries the Near East had bowed 
the knee. 


Alexander entered Asia Minor near the plain of Troy, visited 
this site made famous by his legendary ancestor, Achilles, 
Battle of overthrew with little difficulty such troops as op- 

issus, 333 posed him, and then marched southward. Western 

Asia Minor was soon freed of Persian control. 
Meanwhile, Darius III, the king of Persia, had assembled a 









































Alexander and the Conquest of Persia 123 


large army and had advanced to the narrow plain of Issus, 
between the Syrian mountains and the Mediterranean. Superi¬ 
ority in numbers counted for nothing in such cramped quarters. 
Alexander perceived this, and struck with all his force. After 
a stubborn resistance the Persians gave way, turned, and fled. 
The battle now became a massacre, and only the approach of 
night stayed the swords of the Macedonians. 

Alexander’s next step was the siege of Tyre. This Phoenician 
city, the headquarters of Persia’s naval power, lay on an island 
half a mile from the shore. Alexander could only Capture 
approach it by building a mole, or causeway, be- of Tyre, 

• 009 T> p 

tween the shore and the island. Battering rams 
then breached the walls, the Macedonians poured in, and Tyre 
fell by storm. The great emporium of the Near East became 
a heap of ruins. 

From Tyre Alexander led his victorious troops through 
Palestine into Egypt. The Persian officials there offered little 
resistance, and the Egyptians themselves wel- Alexander 
corned Alexander as a deliverer. He entered in E gypt 
Memphis in triumph and then sailed down the Nile to its western 
mouth. Here he laid the foundations of Alexandria, to replace 
Tyre as a commercial metropolis. 

Alexander next turned eastward, reached the Euphrates, 
crossed this river and the Tigris, and near the old Assyrian town 
of Arbela again defeated the army of the Great Battle 
King. The battle of Arbela decided the fate of of Arbela, 
the Persian Empire. Alexander had only to 331 B ' C ' 
gather the fruits of victory. Babylon surrendered to him with¬ 
out a struggle, and Susa, the Persian capital, fell into his hands. 

Alexander had now overrun all the Persian territories except 
distant Iran and India. These regions were peopled by warlike 
tribes of a very different stamp from the effeminate Alexander 
Persians. Alexander might well have been con- in Iran 
tent to have left them undisturbed, but the man and India 
could never rest while there were still conquests to be made. 
Long marches and many battles were required to subdue the 
tribes about the Caspian and the inhabitants of the countries 


124 


Greece 


now known as Afghanistan and Russian Turkestan. Alexander 
next led his soldiers into the valley of the Indus and quickly 
added northwestern India to the Macedonian possessions 
(§ 19). He then pressed forward to the conquest of the Ganges 
Valley, but his troops refused to go farther. They had had their 
fill of war. 

Alexander was of too adventurous a disposition to return by 
the way he had come. He built a fleet on the Indus and had it 
The return accompany the army down the river to its mouth, 
to Babylon His admiral, Nearchus, was then sent with the 
fleet to explore the Indian Ocean and to discover, if possible, a 
sea route between India and the Near East. Alexander him¬ 
self led the army by a long and toilsome march, through desert 
wastes, to Babylon. That city became the capital of his empire. 

The reign of Alexander was now nearly over. In 323 b.c., 
Death of while planning expeditions against the Arabs, 

Alexander, Carthage, and the Italian states, he suddenly 

323 B C 

sickened and died. He was not quite thirty-three 

years of age. 

Alexander was one of the foremost, perhaps the first, of the 
great captains of antiquity. Had he been only this, his career 
Alexander would not bulk so large in history. The truth is, 
in history that cluring an eleven years’ reign this remarkable 
man stamped an enduring impress upon much of the ancient 
world. At his death the old Greece came to an end. We fol¬ 
low during the next two hundred years, not the development 
of a single people, but the gradual spread of Greek civilization 
in the Near East. We enter upon the Grseco-Oriental or Hel¬ 
lenistic 1 Age. 

43. The Graeco-Oriental Age 

The empire created by Alexander did not survive him. It 
Hellenistic broke up almost immediately into a number of 
kingdoms Hellenistic kingdoms, including Macedonia, Syria, 
and Egypt. They were ruled by dynasties descended from 

1 The term “Hellenic” refers to purely Greek culture; the term “Hellenistic” 
to Greek culture as modified by contact with that of the Near East. 



EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT, 336-323 B. C. 

"1 Under Alexander I 


Allied States 


Independent States 


Route of Alexander 



1 Kingdom of the I-1 Kingdom of the |-1 Macedonian 

■* Seleucids *- • Ptolemies ' -‘ Kingdom 


Route of Nearchus 




































































































. . 








’ 



' 




































125 


The Graeco-Oriental Age 

Alexander’s generals. 1 These three states remained independ¬ 
ent, though with shifting boundaries, until the era of Roman 
expansion in the Near East. 

Alexander’s conquests, and the subsequent establishment of 
Hellenistic kingdoms, resulted in the disappearance Hellenizing 
of the barriers which had so long separated Eu- the Orient 
rope and Asia. Henceforth the Near East lay open to Greek 



Lighthouse of Alexandria (Restored) 

The island of Pharos, in the harbor of Alexandria, contained a lighthouse built about 
280 b.c. It rose in three diminishing stages, the first being square, the second octagonal, 
and the third round, to a height of nearly four hundred feet. On the apex stood a statue. 
The lighthouse was considered by the ancients one of the “ Seven Wonders ” of the world. 
It collapsed (as the result of repeated earthquakes) in 1326 a.d. The minarets of Moslem 
mosques and spires of Christian churches are both derived from this famous structure. 


merchants and artisans, Greek architects and artists, Greek phi¬ 
losophers, scientists, and writers. They brought their Hellenic 
culture with them and became the teachers of those whom they 
had called “barbarians.” 

The Hellenizing of the Orient was begun by Alexander, who 
founded no less than seventy cities in Egypt, in western Asia, 

1 The Antigonids (from Antigonus) in Macedonia, the Seleucids (from Seleucus) 
in Syria, and the Ptolemies (from Ptolemy) in Egypt. 

































126 


Greece 


in central Asia, and even in India. Alexander’s successors con¬ 
tinued city-building on a still more extensive scale. The 
Hellenistic Hellenistic cities, unlike Greek city-states, did not 
cities enjoy independence. They formed a part of 

the kingdom in which they lay, and paid tribute, or taxes, to its 
ruler. The new cities also contrasted in appearance with those 
of Greece. They had broad streets, well paved and sometimes 
lighted at night, a good water supply, and baths, theaters, 
gymnasiums, and parks. Such splendid foundations formed the 
real backbone of Hellenism in the Near East. Their inhabit¬ 
ants, whether Greeks or “barbarians,” spoke Greek, read Greek, 
and wrote in Greek. A large part of the civilized world now 
had for the first time a common language. 

Some Hellenistic cities were only garrison posts in the heart 
of remote provinces or along the frontier. Many more, such as 
Commercial Alexandria in Egypt, Seleucia in Babylonia, An- 

o^East 11556 tioch in Syria, and Rhodes on the island of that 

and West name, were thriving business centers, through 

which Asiatic products, even those of distant India and China, 
reached Greece. Kings, nobles, and rich men now began to 
build palaces, to keep up large households with many servants, 
and to possess fine furniture, carpets, tapestries, gold and 
silver vessels, and beautiful works of art. The standard of 
living was thus raised by the introduction of luxuries to which 
the old Greeks had been strangers. 

Greece and the Near East exchanged ideas as well as com- 

Inteliectual modities. What the Greeks had accomplished in 

relations art, literature, philosophy, and science became 

between x A ** 

East and familiar to the Egyptians, Babylonians, and other 
West Oriental peoples. They, in turn, introduced the 

Greeks to their achievements in the realm of thought. 

The mingling of East and West went on most thoroughly at 
Alexandria in Egypt. It was the foremost Hellenistic center, 

. because of its unrivaled site for commerce with 

Alexandria . 

Africa, Asia, and Europe. The inhabitants in¬ 
cluded not only Egyptians, Greeks, and Macedonians, but also 
Jews, Syrians, Babylonians, and other Orientals. The popula- 


The Graeco-Oriental Age 127 

tion increased rapidly, and by the time of Christ Alexandria 
ranked in size next to imperial Rome. 

The Macedonian rulers of Egypt made Alexandria their 
capital and did everything to adorn it with imposing public 
buildings and masterpieces of Greek art. Learn- Alexandrian 
ing flourished at Alexandria. The city possessed culture 
in the royal Museum, or Temple of the Muses, a genuine uni¬ 
versity, with lecture 
halls, botanical and 
zoological gardens, 
an astronomical ob¬ 
servatory, and a great 
library. The collec¬ 
tion of books, in the 
form of papyrus or 
parchment (sheep¬ 
skin) manuscripts, 
finally amounted to 
over five hundred 
thousand rolls, or 
almost everything 
that had been writ¬ 
ten in antiquity. 

The more important 
works were carefully 
edited by Alexan¬ 
drian scholars, thus 
supplying standard 
editions of the classics for other ancient libraries. The learned 
men at Alexandria also translated into Greek various pro¬ 
ductions of Oriental literature, including the Hebrew Old 
Testament. Science likewise flourished in Alexandria, for 
the professors, who lived in the Museum at public expense, 
had the quiet and leisure so necessary for research. Much 
progress took place at this time in mathematics, astronomy, 
physics, geography, anatomy, medicine, and other branches of 
knowledge. 
















128 


Greece 


During the period following Alexander the Greek city-states 
began to realize that the freedom they prized so much could only 
The jEtolian ^e secured by a close union. They now formed 
and Achaean the ^Etolian League in central Greece and the 
leagues Achaean League in the Peloponnesus. The latter 

was the more important. Its business lay in the hands of an 
assembly or congress, where each city, whether large or small, 
had one vote. The assembly, meeting twice a year, chose a 
general, or president, levied taxes, raised armies, and conducted 
all foreign affairs. The cities, in local matters, continued to 
enjoy their old independence. This organization shows that 
the Achaean League was more than a mere alliance of city-states. 
It formed the first genuine federation that the world had ever 
seen, and its example was repeatedly cited by the American 
statesman who helped to frame our Constitution. The attempt 
to unify Greece came too late. Sparta refused to enter the 
Achaean League, and Athens failed to join the ^Etolian League. 
Without these two powerful states, neither association could 
achieve lasting success. 

The Greeks who emigrated in such numbers to Egypt and 
western Asia lost citizenship at Athens, Sparta, or Thebes and 
Cosmopoli- formed subjects of the Ptolemies or of the Seleu- 
tanism cids. They surrendered local attachments and 

prejudices, which had so long divided them, to become “cos¬ 
mopolitans,” or citizens of the world. They likewise lost old 
feelings of antagonism toward non-Greeks. Henceforth the 
distinction between Greek and Barbarian gradually faded away, 
and mankind became ever more unified in sympathies and aspira¬ 
tions. This Graeco-Oriental world of city-states, federations, 
and kingdoms about the eastern Mediterranean was now to come 
in contact with the great power which had been arising in the 
western Mediterranean — Rome. 

Studies 

i. Compare the area of Europe with that of Brazil, of Canada, and of 
the United States (including Alaska). 2. “In many respects Europe may 
be considered the most favored among the continents.” Explain this 


The Graeco-Oriental Age 


129 


statement in detail. 3. “The history of the Mediterranean from the days 
of Phoenicia, Crete, and Greece to our own time is a history of western 
civilized mankind.” Comment on this statement. 4. How is Greece in 
its physical aspects “the most European of European lands”? 5. Name 
and locate the principal centers of /Egean civilization (map facing page 64). 
6. Locate on the map (on page 97) Mount Olympus, Dodona, Delphi, 
Olympia, and the island of Delos. 7. Define the terms monarchy, aris¬ 
tocracy, tyranny, and democracy, as the Greeks used them. 8. What dif¬ 
ferences existed between Phoenician and Greek colonization? 9. Why 
have Greek colonies been called “patches of Hellas”? 10. Locate the 
Greek colonies of Byzantium, Cumae, Messina, Syracuse, Massilia, Cyrene, 
and Naucratis (map facing page 74). 11. What reasons may be given for 

the Greek victory in the Persian wars? 12. How far can the expression 
“government of the people, by the people, and for the people” be applied 
to the Athenian democracy? 13. Mention some differences between 
Athenian democracy and American democracy. 14. Why has the Pelo¬ 
ponnesian War been called the “suicide of Greece”? 15. Trace on the 
maps (facing page 124) the routes followed by Alexander and his admiral 
Nearchus. 16. Show that the founding of Hellenistic cities formed a re¬ 
newal of Greek colonial expansion. 17. What resemblances are there be¬ 
tween the Achaean League and American federal government? 18. “The 
seed-ground of European civilization is neither Greece nor the Orient, but 
a world joined of the two.” Comment on this statement. 



A Greek Cameo 


Museum, Vienna 

Cut in sardonyx. Represents 
Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of 
Egypt, and his wife Arsinoe. 


CHAPTER VI 


ROME 1 

44 . Italy and Sicily 

The Italian Peninsula is long and narrow. It reaches nearly 
seven hundred miles from the Alps to the sea, but measures only 
The Apen- about one hundred miles across, except in the Po 
nines Valley. The shape of Italy is determined by the 

course of the Apennines. Branching off from the Alpine chain 
at the Gulf of Genoa, they cross the peninsula in an easterly 
direction almost to the Adriatic. Then they turn sharply to the 
southeast and parallel the coast for a considerable distance. 
The plains of central Italy, in consequence, are all on the 
western slope of the mountains. In southern Italy the Apen¬ 
nines swerve to the southwest and penetrate the “toe” of the 
peninsula. 

Italy may be divided into a northern, a central, and a southern 
section. These divisions, however, are determined by the 
Divisions of direction of the mountains and not, as in Greece, 
Ital Y chiefly by inlets of the sea. Northern Italy con¬ 

tains the important region known in ancient times as Cisalpine 
Gaul. This is a perfectly level plain two hundred miles in 
length, watered by the Po ( Padus ), which the Romans called 
the “king of rivers,” because of its length and many tributary 
streams. Central Italy, lying south of the Apennines, includes 
seven districts, of which the three on the western coast — 

1 Webster, Readings in Early European History, chapter xiv, “Legends of Early 
Rome”; chapter xv, “Hannibal and the Great Punic War”; chapter xvi, 
“Cato the Censor: a Roman of the Old School”; chapter xvii, “Cicero the 
Orator” ; chapter xviii, “The Conquest of Gaul, Related by Caesar”; chapter xix, 
“The Makers of Imperial Rome: Character Sketches by Suetonius”; chapter xx, 
“Nero, a Roman Emperor.” 


130 


Italian Peoples 


131 

Etruria, Latium, and Campania — were most conspicuous in 
ancient history. Southern Italy, because of its warm climate 
and deeply indented coast, early attracted many Greek colonists. 
Their colonies here came to be known as Magna Grcecia, or 
Great Greece (§38). 

The triangular-shaped island of Sicily is separated from Italy 
by the Strait of Messina, a channel which, at the narrowest 
part, is only two miles wide. Sicily at one time 
must have been joined to the mainland. Its 
mountains, which rise at their highest point in the majestic 
volcano of iEtna, nearly eleven thousand feet above sea level, 
are a continuation of those of Italy. Lying in the center of the 
Mediterranean and in the direct route of merchants and colonists 
from every direction, Sicily has always been a meeting place of 
nations. Greeks, Carthaginians, and Romans contended in 
antiquity for the possession of this beautiful island. 

Geographical conditions exerted the same profound influence 
on Italian history as on that of Greece (§ 33). In the first 
place, the peninsula of Italy is not cut up by a i n fl uence of 
tangle of mountains into many small districts, geographical 
It was therefore easier for the Italians than for the conditions 
Greeks to establish one large and united state. In the second 
place, Italy has comparatively few good harbors, but possesses 
upland pastures and rich lowland plains. The Italian peoples 
consequently developed cattle raising and agriculture much 
earlier than commerce. And in the third place, the location 
of Italy, with its best harbors and most numerous islands on 
the western side, for a long time brought the peninsula into 
closer relations with the western islands and the coasts of Gaul, 
Spain, and North Africa than with the countries bordering on 
the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. If Greece faced the 
civilized nations of the East, Italy fronted the barbarous tribes 
of the West. 


45. Italian Peoples 

The earliest civilization in Italy was introduced there by the 
Etruscans. They came by sea, perhaps from Asia Minor, and 


i3 2 


Rome 


Etruscans 


as early as 1000 b.c. founded a strong state in the region called 
after them Etruria (modern Tuscany). The Etruscan dominions 
in time extended along the coast from the Bay of 
Naples to the Gulf of Genoa and inland to the Po 
Valley as far as the Alps. These Etruscans are a mysterious 
people. No one has been able to read their language. It is 
quite unlike any Indo-European tongue, though written in an 
alphabet borrowed from Greek settlers in Italy. Many other 
cultural influences reached the Etruscans from abroad. Baby¬ 
lonia gave to them the principle of the round arch (§ 29) and the 
practice of divination (§ 27). Etruscan graves contain Egyp¬ 
tian seals marked with hieroglyphs and vases bearing Greek 
designs. The Etruscans were skillful workers in bronze, iron, 
and gold. They built cities with massive walls, arched gates, 
paved streets, and underground drains. A great part of Etrus¬ 
can civilization was ultimately absorbed in that of Rome. 

The Etruscans were followed by the Greeks. Greek colonies 
began to be planted in southern Italy after the middle of the 
Greeks eighth century b.c. (§ 38). The map shows that these 

were all on or near the sea, from the Gulf of 
Taranto to Campania. North of the “heel” of Italy extends 
an almost harborless coast, where nothing tempted the Greeks 
to settle. North of Campania, again, they found the good har¬ 
bors already occupied by the Etruscans. The Greeks, in con¬ 
sequence, never penetrated deeply into Italy. Room was left 
for the native Italians, under the leadership of Rome, to build 
up their own power in the peninsula. 

The Italians were an Indo-European people who spoke a 
language closely related to both Greek and the Celtic tongues 
of western Europe. They entered the Italian 
Peninsula through the numerous Alpine passes, 
probably not long after the Greeks had found a way into the 
Balkan Peninsula (§ 35). Wave after wave of these northerners 
flowed southward, until the greater part of Italy came into their 
possession. We must assume that the invaders, having over¬ 
come all armed opposition, mingled more or less with the earlier 
inhabitants of Italy. There is every reason to believe that 


Italians 









































































































































The Romans 


I 33 

the historic Italians, like the historic Greeks, were a mixed 
people. 

The Italians who settled in the central, eastern, and southern 
parts of the peninsula were highlanders. The western Italians, 
or Latins, were lowlanders. They dwelt in 
Latium, originally only the “flat land” extending The Latins 
south of the Tiber River between the mountains and the sea. 
The Latin plain is about thirty by forty miles in size. Its 
soil, though not very pro¬ 
ductive, can nevertheless 
support a considerable pop¬ 
ulation devoted to herding 
and farming. The Latins, 
as they increased in number, 
gave up tribal life and es¬ 
tablished little city-states, 
like those of Greece. The 
need of defense against their peasant holds a pole - A front of the y° k( 
Etruscan neighbors across 

the Tiber and the Italian tribes in the adjacent mountains 
bound them together. They united at a very early period in the 
Latin League. The chief city in this league was Rome. 

46. The Romans 

Rome began as a Latin settlement on the Palatine Mount. 
It was the central eminence in a group of low hills just south of 
the Tiber and about fourteen miles from its ancient Founding of 
mouth. Shallow water and an island made the Rome 
river easily fordable at this point for Latins and Etruscans and 
led to intercourse between them. Villages also arose on the 
neighboring mounts, and these in time combined with the 
Palatine community. Rome thus became the City of the 
Seven Hills. 1 

Rome, from the start, owed much to a fortunate location. 
The city was easy to defend. It lay far enough from the sea 

1 The Romans believed that their city was founded in 753 b.c., from which year 
all Roman dates were reckoned. 



A bronze group from Arezzo, Italy. The 







134 


Rome 



Early Rome 


to be safe from sudden raids by pirates, and it possessed 
in the seven hills a natural fortress. The city was also well 
Advantages placed for commerce on the only navigable stream 
of the site of in Italy. Finally, Rome was almost in the center 
of Italy, a position from which its warlike inhab¬ 
itants could most easily advance to the conquest of the penin¬ 
sula. 

We cannot trace in detail the development of early Rome. 
The accounts which have reached us are a tissue of legends, 
dealing with Romulus, the supposed founder of the 
city, and the six kings who followed him. What 
seems certain is that the Roman city-state very soon fell under 

the sway of the 
Etruscans, who 
governed it for 
perhaps two cen¬ 
turies or more. 
Etruscan tyr¬ 
anny at length 
provoked a suc¬ 
cessful uprising, 
and Rome be¬ 
came a repub¬ 
lic (about 509 
B.C.) 

Agriculture 
was the chief 
occupation of the 
Roman people. 
“When our forefathers,” said an ancient writer, “would praise 
a worthy man, they praised him as a good farmer and a good 
Roman landlord; and they believed that praise could 


The Capitoline She-Wolf 

Museo dei Conservatori, Rome 

Roman myth made Romulus and Remus the twin sons of the 
war god Mars. Set adrift in a basket on the Tiber, they were cast 
ashore near Mount Palatine, and a she-wolf came and nursed them. 
This bronze, life-sized statue of the wolf is very ancient, probably 
dating from the early fifth century b.c. The figures of the twins 
are modern additions. 


occupations g 0 no further.” 1 Roman farmers raised large 
crops of grain — the staple product of ancient Italy. Cattle- 
breeding, also, must have been an important pursuit, since in 


1 Cato, De agricultura, 1. 



The Romans 


135 



'^miv 


r Lake J %■ 
FU'acciano % { 
C^abatinus) " 


Eretum 


W a 

'Momentum? ^ 


Rome 


Frascati ^ 

(fusculum) 

Alba Longa 

PumeN'emi 

(Nemorensis ) 


Anagni 

(Anagnia) 


Alban La. 


Aricia 


0 Laurentum 


Lavinium 




Carsic 


r u»‘"'r 

0 Gabn - j C . x 

rale.trina 1 -^]^^ 


Port of V; 
Augustus 


The Vicinity of Rome 


early times prices were estimated in oxen and sheep. No 
great inequalities of wealth existed. Few citizens were very 

rich; few were very poor. 
The members of each house¬ 
hold made their own clothing 
from flax or wool, and fash¬ 
ioned out of wood and clay 
what utensils were needed for 
their simple life. The long 
use of copper for money indi¬ 
cates that gold and silver 
were rare among the 1 early 
Romans and that luxury was 
almost unknown. 

The family, in a very real sense, formed the unit of Roman 
society. Its most marked feature was the unlimited authority 



Early Roman Bar Money 

A bar of copper having the value of an ox, 
whose figure is stamped upon it. Dates from 
the fourth century b.c. The Romans subse¬ 
quently cast copper disks to serve as coins. 
















136 


Rome 


of the father. His wife had no legal rights: he could sell her 
into slavery or divorce her at will. Over his sons and his un- 
The Roman married daughters the Roman father ruled supreme 
family as over hi s w if e . He brought up his children to 

be sober, silent, modest in their bearing, and, above all, obedient. 
Their misdeeds he might punish with banishment, slavery, or 
even death. As head of the family, he could claim all their 
earnings; everything they had was his. The father’s great 
authority ceased only with his death. Then his sons, in turn, 
became lords over their families. 


47. Roman Religion 

The Romans paid special veneration to the souls of the dead. 
These were known by the flattering name of manes , the “pure ” 
Worship of or “good ones.” The Romans always regarded 
ancestors the manes as members of the household to which 

they had belonged on earth. The living and the dead were thus 
bound together by the closest ties. The worship of ancestors 
immensely strengthened the father’s authority, for it made him 
the chief priest of the household. It also made marriage a 
sacred duty, so that a man might have children to accord him 
and his forefathers all honors after death. 

The ancient Roman house had only one large room, the 
atrium, where all members of the family lived together. It was 
The house- entered by a single door, which was sacred to the 

hold deities god Janus. On the hearth, opposite the doorway, 

the housewife prepared the meals. The fire that ever blazed 
upon it was sacred to the goddess Vesta. The cupboard where 
the food was kept came under the charge of the Penates, who 
blessed the family store. The house as a whole had its protect¬ 
ing spirits, called Lares. 

The daily worship of these deities took place at the family 

meal. The table would be placed at the side of the hearth, 

Worship Of anc * when the father and his family sat down to it, 

the house- a little food would be thrown into the flames and 

hold deities . • r • , „ 

a portion of wine poured out, as an offering to the 

gods. The images of the Lares and Penates would also be 


Roman Religion 


i37 


brought from the shrine and placed on the table in token of 
their presence at the meal. This religion of the family endured 
with little change throughout Roman history, lingering in 
many households as a pious rite long after the triumph of 
Christianity over paganism. 

The Romans worshiped various gods connected with their 
lives as shepherds, farmers, and warriors. The chief divinity 
was Jupiter, who ruled j up iter and 
the heavens and sent Mars 
rain and sunshine to nourish the 
crops. The war god Mars reflected 
the military character of the Ro¬ 
mans. His sacred animal was the 
fierce, cruel wolf; his symbols were 
spears and shields; his altar was 
the Campus Martius (Field of Mars) 
outside the city walls, where the 
army assembled in battle array. 

March, the first month of the old 
Roman year, was named in his 
honor. Some other divinities were 
borrowed from the Greeks, together 
with many Greek myths. 

The Romans took many precau¬ 
tions, before beginning any enter¬ 
prise, to find out what was the will of the gods and how divine 
favor might first be gained. They did not have oracles, but 

they paid much attention to omens of all sorts. 

...... .. .. Divination 

A sudden flash of lightning, an eclipse of the 

sun, a blazing comet, or an earthquake shock was an omen 
which indicated the disapproval of the gods. The Romans 
learned from their Etruscan neighbors how to predict the future 
by examining the entrails of animal victims. They also bor¬ 
rowed from the Etruscans the practice of looking for signs in 
the number, flight, and action of birds. To consult such signs 
was called “taking the auspices.” 1 

1 Latin auspicium, from auspex, a bird seer. 



The relief represents the chickens in 
the act of feeding. The most favorable 
omen was secured when the fowls 
greedily picked up more of the corn 
than they could swallow at one time. 
Their refusal to eat at all was an 
omen of disaster. 





























Rome 


138 


Priesthoods 


Roman priests, who conducted the state religion, did not form 
a separate class, as in some Oriental countries. They were 
chosen, like other magistrates, from the general 
body of citizens. A board, or “college,” of six 
priests had charge of the public auspices. Another board, that 
of the pontiffs, regulated the calendar, kept the public annals, 
and regulated weights and measures. They were experts in all 
matters of religious ceremonial and hence were very important 
officials. 1 

This old Roman faith was something very different from 
what we understand by religion. It had little direct influence 
importance of on mora lity. It did not promise rewards or 
Roman threaten punishments in a future world. Roman 

religion religion busied itself with the everyday life of man. 

Just as the household was bound together by the tie of common 
worship, so all the citizens were united in a common reverence 
for the deities that guarded the state. The religion of Rome 
made and held together a nation. 


48. The Roman City-State 

Early Rome formed a city-state with a threefold government, 
as in Homeric Greece (§ 37). The king had wide powers: he 
was commander-in-chief, supreme judge, and 

Government . . 

head of the state religion. A council of elders 

(Latin senes, “old men”) made up the Senate, which assisted 

the king in government. The popular assembly, whenever 

summoned by the king, voted on important questions. 

Two magistrates, named consuls, took the king’s place in 

government after the abolition of the monarchy. The consuls 

enjoyed equal honor and authority. Unless both 
The consuls . . . . . . . , 

agreed, nothing could be done. They thus served 

as a check upon each other, as was the case with the two Spartan 

kings. 

When grave danger threatened the state and unity of action 
seemed necessary, the Romans sometimes appointed a dictator. 

1 The title of the president of the pontiffs, Pontifex Maximus (Supreme Pontiff) 
is still that of the pope. 


The Roman City-State 


i39 


The consuls gave up their authority to him and the people put 
their property and lives entirely at his disposal. Th ^ 
The dictator’s term of office might not exceed 
six months, but during this time he had all the power for¬ 
merly wielded by the kings. 

The Roman city-state seems to have been divided, during 
the regal age, between an aristocracy and a 
nobles were called patricians 1 Patricians 
and the common people, plebe- and plebeians 
ians. 2 The patricians occupied a privileged 
position, since they alone sat in the Senate and 
served as magistrates, judges, and priests. 

The plebeians thus found themselves excluded 
from much of the political, legal, and religious 
life of Rome. 

The oppressive sway of the patricians re¬ 
sulted in great unrest at Rome, and after 

the establishment of the republic . 

. ... _ • The tribunes 

the plebeians began to agitate tor 

reforms. They soon compelled the patricians 

to allow them to have officers of their own, 

called tribunes, as a means of protection. 

Any tribune could veto, that is, forbid, the 

act of a magistrate which seemed to bear 

harshly on a citizen. To make sure that 

a tribune’s orders would be respected, his person was made 

sacred, and a solemn curse was pronounced upon the man who 

injured him or interrupted him in the performance of his duties. 

There now followed a struggle on the part of the plebeians for 
legal equality with the patricians. The Romans hitherto had 
had simply unwritten customs, which were inter- The Twelve 
preted by patrician judges. The plebeians de- Tables, 451- 
manded that the customs be set down in writing — 449 B C ‘ 
be made laws — so that every one might know them and secure 
justice in the courts. A commission was finally appointed to 
prepare a code. The laws were engraved on twelve bronze 

1 Latin patres, “fathers.” 2 Latin plebs, “crowd.” 


commons. The 



Ctjrule Chair 
and Fasces 


A consul sat on the 
cur ule chair. The fasces 
(axes in a bundle of 
rods) symbolized his 
power to flog and be¬ 
head offenders. 














140 


Rome 


tablets and set up in the Forum. Some sentences from them 
have come down to us in rude, unpolished Latin. They mark 
the beginning of Rome’s legal system. 

It would take too long to tell how the plebeians broke down 
the patrician monopoly of office holding. The result was that 
Plebeian in time they became eligible to the consulships 
office holding an d other magistracies, to seats in the Senate, and 
even to the priesthoods. Henceforth all citizens, whether 
patricians or plebeians, enjoyed the same rights at Rome. 

The Roman city-state called itself a republic — res publica 
— “a thing of the people.” The citizens in their assemblies 
Republican made the laws, elected public officials, and decided 
Rome questions of war and peace. But Rome was less 

democratic than Athens. The citizens could not frame, criticize, 
or amend public measures; they could only vote “yes” or “no” 
to proposals made to them by a magistrate. All this afforded 
a sharp contrast to the vigorous debating which went on in the 
Athenian popular assembly (§ 40). 

The authority of the magistrates, including both consuls 
and tribunes, was much limited by the Senate. It contained 
Th Se ate a ^ out three hundred members, who held office for 
life. Vacancies in it were filled, as a rule, by 
persons who had previously held one of the higher magistracies. 
All weighty matters came before it for decision. It conducted 
war, received ambassadors from foreign countries, made alli¬ 
ances, administered conquered territories, and, in short, formed 
the real governing body of the republic. The Senate was not 
unworthy of its high position. During the centuries when 
Rome was winning dominion over Italy and throughout the 
Mediterranean basin, the Senate conducted public affairs with 
foresight, energy, and success. An admiring foreigner once 
called it “an assembly of kings.” 

49. Expansion of Rome over Italy 

The Romans seem always to have been a military people. 
Their history for several centuries after the founding of the re¬ 
public in 509 b.c. is a record of almost uninterrupted warfare, 


Expansion of Rome over Italy 


141 


which resulted in steady conquests and annexations of territory. 
Two stages in the expansion of Rome over Italy may be dis¬ 
tinguished. The first (ending in 338 b.c.) marked Stages in 
the triumph of Rome over her former allies, the Roman 
Latins, and the establishment of her supremacy in ex P ansion 
Latium. The second (ending in 264 b.c.) saw her supremacy 
established over the Etruscans in 
Etruria, the Italian tribes of the Apen¬ 
nines, and the Greek cities in southern 
Italy. 

Rome now ruled from the Strait of 
Messina northward to the Arno River. 

All the peoples of this part Italy under 
of the Italian Peninsula Roman 
acknowledged her sway. It should 
be noticed, however, that as yet Rome 
controlled only the central and south¬ 
ern parts of what is the modern king¬ 
dom of Italy. The Gauls held the Po 
Valley, while most of Sicily and Sar¬ 
dinia remained a possession of the 
Carthaginians. 

As Rome extended her rule in Italy, 
she bestowed upon the conquered peo¬ 
ples citizenship. It formed Roman 
a great gift, for a Roman citizens 
citizen enjoyed many privileges. He 
could hold and exchange property 
under the protection of Roman law; 
could contract a valid marriage which 
made his children themselves citizens; 
and could vote in the popular assem¬ 
blies at Rome and hold public office 
there. This extension of the citizenship to those who formerly 
had been enemies was something quite new in history, and 
it was the great secret of Rome’s success as a governing 
power. 



A Roman Standard 
Bearer 
B onn Museum 

From a gravestone of the first 
century a.d. The standard con¬ 
sists of a spear crowned with a 
wreath, below which is a crossbar 
bearing pendant acorns. Then 
follow, in order, a metal disk, Ju¬ 
piter’s eagle standing on a thunder¬ 
bolt, a crescent moon, an amulet, 
and a large tassel. 








142 


Rome 


Italian allies 


Roman roads 


The Italian peoples who failed to receive citizenship at this 
time were not treated as complete subjects, but as “friends and 
allies” of the Romans. They lost the right of de¬ 
claring war on one another, of making treaties, 
and of coining money. Rome otherwise allowed them to 
govern themselves, never calling on them for tribute, and only 
requiring that they should furnish soldiers for the Roman army 
in time of war. The allied states occupied a large part of the 
Italian Peninsula. 

The Romans established what were called Latin colonies in 
various parts of Italy. These usually consisted of veteran 
L ti i soldiers or poor peasants, who wanted farms of 
their own. Such colonies, being offshoots of Rome, 
naturally remained faithful to her interests. 

The colonies were united with one another and with Rome 
by an extensive system of roads. The first great road, known 
as the Appian Way, was carried as far as Capua 
and was later extended to Brindisi ( Brundusium) 
on the Adriatic, whence travelers embarked for Greece. Other 
trunk lines were soon built in Italy, and from them a network of 
smaller highways penetrated every part of the peninsula. Ro¬ 
man roads were intended to facilitate the rapid dispatch of 
troops, supplies, and official messages into every corner of 
Italy. Hence the roads ran, as much as possible, in straight 
lines and on easy grades. Nothing was allowed to obstruct 
their course. Engineers cut through or tunneled the hills, 
bridged rivers and gorges, and spanned low, swampy lands with 
viaducts of stone. These magnificent highways were free to 
the public, serving as avenues of trade and travel and so 
helping to bring the Italian peoples into close touch with Rome. 

Rome thus began in Italy the process of Romanization which 
she was to extend later to Sicily, Spain, Gaul, and Britain. 
Romaniza- She began to make all Italians like herself in blood, 
tion of Italy language, religion, and customs. More and more 
they came to regard themselves as one people — a civilized 
people who spoke Latin as contrasted with the barbarous, 
Celtic-speaking Gauls. 










































































































. 



- 





* 















' 



















































■ 






, 

































Rome and Carthage 


143 


50. Rome and Carthage 

Rome had scarcely finished the conquest of Italy before she 
became involved in a life-and-death struggle with the city of 
Carthage (§ 25). This Phoenician colony occupied 
an admirable site, for it bordered on rich farming Carthage 
land and had the largest harbor of North Africa. The Cartha¬ 
ginians gradually extended their control over the adjacent 
coast, eastward as far as the Greek city of Cyrene and westward 
to the Atlantic. Carthaginian settlements also lined the shores 
of Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, the Balearic Islands, and southern 
Spain. The western part of the Mediterranean formed, to a 
large extent, a Carthaginian lake. 

The Phoenician founders of Carthage kept their own (Semitic) 
language, customs, and beliefs and did not mingle with the 
native African peoples. The Carthaginian govern- Carthaginian 
ment was in form republican, with two elective civilization 
magistrates somewhat resembling Roman consuls. The real 
power lay, however, with a group of merchant nobles, who cared 
very little for the welfare of the poor freemen and slaves over 
whom they ruled. The wealth of Carthage enabled her to 
raise armies of mercenary soldiers and to build warships which 
in size, number, and equipment surpassed those of any other 
Mediterranean state. Mistress of a wide realm, strong both 
by land and sea, Carthage was now to prove herself Rome’s 
most dangerous foe. 

The First Punic War 1 was a contest for Sicily. The Car¬ 
thaginians wished to extend their rule over all that island, which 
from its situation seems to belong almost as much First Punic 
to Africa as to Italy. The Romans, now supreme War, 264-241 
in the Italian Peninsula, also cast envious eyes on B ' C ' 

Sicily. They believed, too, that the conquest of Sicily by the 
Carthaginians would soon be followed by the invasion of south¬ 
ern Italy. The war between the two peoples lasted nearly 
twenty-four years. It was fought mainly on the sea. The 
Carthaginians at the start had things all their own way, but with 

1 “Punic” (Latin Punions) is another form of the word “Phoenician.” 


144 


Rome 


characteristic energy the Romans built fleet after fleet and at 
length won a complete victory over the enemy. The treaty of 
peace deprived Carthage of Sicily. That island now became 
the first Roman province. 

The peace amounted to no more than an armed truce. The 
decisive conflict, which should determine whether Rome or 
The interval Carthage was to rule the western Mediterranean, 
of preparation h a( t y e t t 0 come. Before it came, Rome strength¬ 
ened her military position by seizing Sardinia and Corsica, in 



A Testudo 


A relief from the Column of Trajan, Rome. The name testudo, a tortoise (shell), was ap¬ 
plied to the covering made by a body of soldiers who placed their shields over their heads. 
The shields fitted so closely together that men could walk on them and even horses and 
chariots could be driven over them. 


spite of Carthaginian protests against this unwarranted action, 
and by conquering the Gauls in the Po Valley. The Roman 
power now extended over northern Italy to the foot of the Alps. 
Carthage, meanwhile, created a new empire in Spain, as far north 
as the Ebro River. Spain at this time was a rich, though un¬ 
developed, country. The produce of its silver mines filled the 
Carthaginian treasury, and its hardy tribes made excellent 
soldiers for the Carthaginian army. The Punic city thus had 
both means and men for another struggle with Rome. 




Rome and Carthage 


I 45 


Hannibal 


The war which now ensued has been sometimes called the 
Hannibalic War, because it centered about the personality 
of Hannibal the Carthaginian. As a commander, 
he ranks with Alexander the Great. The Mace¬ 
donian king conquered for the glory of conquest; Hannibal, 
burning with patriotism, sought to destroy the power which had 
humbled his native land. He failed; and his failure left Car¬ 
thage weaker than he found her. 



The Romans planned to conduct the war in Spain and Africa, 
at a distance from their own shores. Hannibal’s bold move¬ 
ments took them by surprise. The young Cartha- Second p un i c 
ginian general had determined to fight in Italy. War, 218- 
Since Roman fleets now controlled the western * ’ 
Mediterranean, it was necessary for him to lead his army, with 
its supplies, equipment, horses, and war elephants, from Spain 
through the defiles of the Pyrenees, across the wide, deep Rhone, 
over the snow-covered passes of the Alps, and down their steeper 


















146 


Rome 


southern slopes into the valley of the Po. He did all this and 
at length stood on Italian soil. For fifteen years thereafter he 
maintained himself in Italy, marching up and down the penin¬ 
sula, almost at will, and inflicting severe defeats upon the 
Romans. Hannibal, however, had no siege engines to reduce 
the Latin colonies that studded Italy or to capture Rome itself. 
His little army dwindled away, year by year, and reinforcements 
sent from Spain were caught and destroyed by the Romans 
before they could effect a junction with his troops. Meanwhile, 
the brilliant Roman commander, Publius Scipio, drove the 
Carthaginians out of Spain and invaded Africa. Hannibal was 
summoned home to face this new adversary. He came, and on 
the field of Zama met his first and only defeat. Scipio, the 
victor, received the proud surname Africcmus. 

The treaty of peace following the battle of Zama required 
Carthage to cede Spain, surrender all but ten of her warships, 
Victorious and pay a heavy indemnity. She also agreed 
R° me not to wage war anywhere without the consent of 

Rome, thus becoming, in effect, a vassal state. The triumph of 
Rome was probably essential to the continuance of European 
civilization. Had Carthage triumphed, Oriental ideas and cus¬ 
toms might have spread throughout the western Mediterranean. 
From that fate Rome saved Europe. 

The last chapter of Carthaginian history remained to be 
written. Though Carthage was no longer a dangerous rival, 
Third Punic R° me watched anxiously for half a century the 
War, 149- reviving commerce of the Punic city and at length 
determined' to blot it out of existence. A Roman 
army landed in Africa, and the Carthaginians were ordered to 
remove ten miles from the sea. It was a sentence of death to 
a people who lived almost entirely by overseas trade. In 
despair they took up arms again and for three years resisted 
the Romans. The city was finally captured, burned, and its 
site dedicated to the infernal gods. The Carthaginian terri¬ 
tories in North Africa henceforth became a Roman province. 

Rome now ruled without a rival in the western Mediterranean. 
Not many years passed before she also extended her sway over 


Rome Mistress of the Mediterranean 


147 

the kingdom of Macedonia, the Greek city-states, and the 
coast of Asia Minor, thus becoming supreme in Rome in the 
the eastern Mediterranean. She built up this East 
mighty power at a terrible cost in blood and treasure. Let us 
see what use she made of it. 

51. Rome Mistress of the Mediterranean 

Rome’s dealings with her new dependencies overseas did 
not follow the methods that proved so successful in Italy. 
The Italian peoples had received liberal treat¬ 
ment. Rome regarded them as allies and in many Provinces 
instances conferred upon them Roman citizenship. But for 
non-Italians Rome adopted the same system of imperial rule 
that had been previously followed by Athens (§40). She 
treated the foreign peoples from Spain to Asia as subjects 
and made her conquered territories into provinces. Their 
inhabitants were obliged to pay tribute and accept the over¬ 
sight of Roman officials. 

The proper management of conquered territories is always 
a difficult problem for the best-intentioned state. It cannot 
be truly said, however, that even Rome’s inten- £vils of pro _ 
tions were praiseworthy. There was little desire vincial admin- 
to rule for the good of the subject peoples. A lstratlon 
Roman governor exercised almost absolute sway over his 
province. He usually looked upon it as a source of personal 
gain and did everything possible during his year of office to en¬ 
rich himself at the expense of the inhabitants. They could 
complain of the governor’s conduct to the Senate, which had 
appointed him, but their injuries stood little chance of being 
redressed by senatorial courts quite ignorant of provincial 
affairs and notoriously open to bribery. The provincials also 
suffered from the extortions of the tax collectors, whose very 
name ( publicani ) became a byword for greed. 1 

A possible solution of the problem of provincial administra¬ 
tion might have been found, if the provincials had been allowed 

1 In the New Testament “publicans and sinners” are mentioned side by side. 
See Matthew, ix, io. 


148 


Rome 


to send delegates to speak and act for them before the Senate 
and the popular assemblies of Rome. The representative sys- 
„ tern, however, met no more favor with the Ro- 

sentative mans than with the Athenians. Rome, like Athens, 

system W as a city-state suddenly called to the responsibilities 

of imperial rule. The machinery of her government worked 
well in a small republican community, but it broke down when 
extended to distant lands and peoples. 
A single city could not rule, with jus¬ 
tice and efficiency, all Italy and the 
Mediterranean basin. 

Successful foreign wars greatly en¬ 
riched Rome. The soldiers received 
Profitable large gifts from their 

conquests commander, sharing the 

booty taken from the enemy. The 
state itself made money from the 
sale of enslaved prisoners and their 
Youth Reading a Papy- property. When once peace had been 
rus Roll declared, Roman governors and tax 

Relief on a sarcophagus collectors followed in the wake of the 



The papyrus roll was sometimes 
very long. The entire Iliad or 
Odyssey might be contained in a 
single manuscript measuring one 
hundred and fifty feet in length. 
In the third century a.d. the un¬ 
wieldy roll began to give way to 
the tablet, composed of a number 
of leaves held together by a ring. 
About this time, also, the use of 
vellum, or parchment made of 
sheepskin, became common. 


armies and squeezed the provincials 
at every turn. The Romans, indeed, 
seem to have conquered the world less 
for glory than for profit. 

The wealth that now poured into 
Rome from every side promoted the 
Growth of growth of luxurious tastes, 
luxury Newly rich Romans de¬ 

veloped a relish for all sorts of reckless 


display. They built fine houses adorned with statues, costly 
paintings, and furnishings. They surrounded themselves with 
troops of slaves. Instead of plain linen clothes, they wore 
garments of silk and gold. At their banquets they spread 
embroidered carpets, purple coverings, and dishes of gilt plate. 
Pomp and splendor replaced the rude simplicity of earlier times. 

The rich were becoming richer, but it seems that the poor 








Rome Mistress of the Mediterranean 149 


were also becoming poorer. After Rome had conquered so 
much of the Mediterranean basin, her markets were flooded 
with the cheap wheat raised in the provinces, Disappear _ 
especially in those granaries, Sicily and North ance of the 
Africa. The price of wheat fell so low that Roman P easantr y 
peasants could not raise enough to support their families and 
pay their taxes. They had to sell out, often at a ruinous sacri¬ 
fice, to capitalists, who turned many small farms into extensive 
sheep pastures, cattle ranches, vineyards, and olive orchards. 
These great estates were worked by gangs of slaves from Car¬ 
thage, Spain, Macedonia, Greece, and Asia Minor. The free 
peasantry, which had always been the strength of the Roman 
state, largely disappeared. 

The decline of agriculture and the ruin of the small farmer 
under the stress of foreign competition may be studied in modern 
England as well as in ancient Italy. An English- The exodus 
man, under the same circumstances, will often t0 the Clties 
emigrate to America or to Australia, where land is cheap and it 
is easy to make a living. Roman peasants did not care to go 
abroad. They thronged, instead, to the cities, to Rome es¬ 
pecially, where they labored for a small wage, fared plainly on 
wheat bread, and dwelt in huge lodging houses, three or four 
stories high. 

We know little about these poor people of Rome. They must 

have lived from hand to mouth. Since their votes controlled 

elections in the popular assemblies, they were 

. „ 1 1 r The Clt y mob 

courted by candidates for office and kept from 

grumbling by being fed and amused. Such propertyless citizens, 

too lazy for steady work, too intelligent to starve, formed, with 

the riffraff of a great city, the elements of a dangerous mob. 

The mob, henceforth, plays an ever larger part in the history of 


the times. 

The conquest by the Romans, first of Magna Gracia and 
Sicily, then of Greece itself and the Hellenistic East, Greek in _ 
familiarized them with Greek culture. Roman fluence at 
soldiers and traders carried back to Italy an ac¬ 
quaintance with Greek customs. Thousands of cultivated Greeks, 


Rome 


150 

some slaves and others freemen, settled in Rome as actors, 
physicians, artists, and writers. Here they introduced the 
language, religion, literature, and art of their native land. 
Roman nobles of the better type began to take an interest in 
other things than farming, commerce, or war. They imitated 
Greek fashions in dress and manners, collected Greek books, 
and filled their homes with the productions of Greek art. Every 
aspect of Roman society felt the quickening influence of the 
older, richer culture of the Greek world. It was a Roman poet 
who wrote, — “Captive Greece captured her conqueror rude.” 1 

52. Decline of the Roman City-State 

The Romans won dominion abroad, only to lose freedom at 
home. The Roman city-state, formerly a self-governing com- 
A century monwealth, became transformed into an empire, 
of revolution Two principal causes of the transformation may be 
mentioned. The first cause was political strife between Roman 
citizens. The class struggles between rich and poor, aristocrats 
and commoners, offered every opportunity for unscrupulous 
leaders to mount to power, now with the support of the nobles, 
now with that of the populace. The second cause was foreign 
warfare , which enabled ambitious generals, supported by their 
soldiery, to become supreme in the government. Rome, after 
conquering the nations, found that she must herself submit to 
the rule of one man. All this development took place in little 
more than a century after the capture and destruction of 
Carthage. 

The century of revolution began with Tiberius Gracchus, 
who belonged to a noble Roman family distinguished for its 
Tiberius services to the republic. He started out as a 
Gracchus moderate social reformer. Having been elected 
one of the ten tribunes (§ 48) of the people, he brought forward 
in 133 B.c. a measure intended to revive the drooping agriculture 
of Italy. Tiberius proposed that the public lands of Rome, 
then largely occupied by wealthy men, who alone had the capital 

1 Horace, Epistles, ii, i, 156. 


Rome Mistress of the Mediterranean 151 

to work them with cattle and slaves, should be reclaimed by the 
state, divided into small tracts, and given to the poorer citizens. 
This proposal aroused a hornet’s nest about the reformer’s ears. 
Rich people had occupied the public lands so long that they had 
come to look upon them as really their own. The great land 
owners in the Senate got another tribune, devoted to their 
interests, to place his veto on the measure. The impatient 
Tiberius now took a false step. Though a magistrate could not 
legally be removed from office, Tiberius had the offending tribune 
deposed and thus secured the desired legislation. This action 
further angered the aristocrats, who threatened to impeach him 
as soon as his term expired. To avoid impeachment Tiberius 
sought reelection to the tribunate for the following year. This, 
again, was contrary to the constitution, which did not permit 
any one to hold office for two successive terms. On the day 
appointed for the election, while voting was in progress, a crowd 
of senators burst into the Forum and killed Tiberius, together 
with three hundred of his followers. Both sides had now begun 
to disregard the law. Force and bloodshed, henceforth, were 
to decide political disputes. 

Nine years after the death of Tiberius Gracchus, his brother 
Gaius became a tribune. One of Gaius’s first measures per¬ 
mitted the sale of grain from public storehouses to Gaius 
Roman citizens at about half the market price. Gracchus 
The law made Gaius popular with the poorer classes, but it 
was very unwise. Charity of this sort increased, rather than 
lessened, the number of paupers. Gaius showed much more 
statesmanship in his other measures. He encouraged the 
emigration of landless men from Italy to the provinces and 
introduced reforms in provincial administration. He even pro¬ 
posed to bestow the right of voting in the assemblies at 
Rome upon the inhabitants of the Latin colonies (§49). The 
effort to extend Roman citizenship cost Gaius his popularity. 
It aroused the jealousy of the city mob, which believed that the 
enrollment of new citizens would mean the loss of its privileges. 
There would not be so many free shows and so much cheap 
grain. The people therefore rejected the measure. They 


z 5 2 


Rome 


The senato¬ 
rial aristoc¬ 
racy 


even failed to reelect Gaius to the tribunate, though a law 
had been recently passed permitting a man to hold the posi¬ 
tion of tribune year after year. When Gaius was no longer 
protected by the sanctity of the tribune’s office, he fell an 
easy victim to senatorial hatred. Another bloody tumult 
broke out, in which Gaius and several thousand of his followers 
perished. 

Civil strife at Rome had so far left the aristocrats at the head 
of affairs. They still controlled the Senate, and the Senate still 
governed Rome. But that body had degenerated. 
The senators were no longer such able and patriotic 
men as those who had piloted the state while Rome 
was gaining world dominion (§ 48). They now thought less of 
the republic than of their own interests. Hence, as we have just 
seen, they blocked every effort of the Gracchi to improve the 
condition of the poorer citizens in Italy or of the provincials out¬ 
side of Italy. Their growing incompetence and corruption, 
both at home and abroad, made the people more anxious than 
ever for a leader against the senatorial aristocracy. 

The popular leader who appeared before long was not another 
tribune but a general named Marius. He gained his greatest 
distinction in a war with some of the Teutonic 
peoples. These barbarians, whom we now hear of 
for the first time, had begun their migrations southward toward 
the Mediterranean basin. Rome was henceforth to face them in 
every century of her national existence. The decisive victories 
which Marius gained over them in southern Gaul and northern 
Italy removed a grave danger threatening Rome. The time 
had not come for classical civilization to be submerged under a 
wave of barbarism. 

Meanwhile, the senatorial aristocracy also found a leader in 
a noble named Sulla. He, too, rose to eminence as a successful 
Sulla general, this time in a war between Rome and the 

Italian allies. It resulted from the refusal of the 
Senate and popular assemblies to extend Roman citizenship 
throughout Italy. The war ended only when Rome granted the 
desired citizenship, thus returning to her policy in former times 


Marius 


JULIUS C^SAR AUGUSTUS 

A bust in the British Museum. London A bust in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 











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Rome Mistress of the Mediterranean 


i53 


(§ 49). The inhabitants of nearly all the Italian towns were 
soon enrolled as citizens at Rome, though they could not vote 
or stand for office unless they visited in person the capital city. 
In practice, therefore, the populace of Rome still had the con¬ 
trolling voice in ordinary legislation. 

Marius and Sulla were rivals not only in war but also in 
politics. The one was the champion of the democrats, the 
other, of the aristocrats. The rivalry between Rivalry of 
them finally led to civil war, with its attendant Marius and 
bloodshed. Sulla triumphed, thus becoming su- SuUa 
preme in the state. Rome now came under the rule of one man, 
for the first time since the expulsion of the kings. Sulla used his 
position of “Perpetual Dictator” only to pass a series of laws 
intended to intrench the Senate in power. He then retired 
to private life and died soon afterward (78 b.c.). 

After Sulla’s death his friend Pompey was the leading figure 
in Roman politics. Pompey won great renown as a commander. 
He crushed a rebellion of the Spaniards, put down Pompey 
a formidable rebellion in Italy of slaves, outlaws, 
and ruined peasants, ridded the Mediterranean of pirates, and 
won sweeping conquests in the Near East, where he added Syria 
and Palestine to the Roman dominions. 

Rome at this time contained another able man in the person 

of Julius Caesar. He belonged to a noble family, but his father 

had favored the democratic cause and his aunt „ 
t 1 • i ^ Julius Caesar 

had married Marius. Caesar as a young man 

threw himself whole-heartedly into the exciting game of politics 

as played in the capital city. He won the ear of the multitude 

by his fiery harangues, his bribes of money, and his gifts and 

public shows. After spending all his private fortune in this 

way, he was “financed” by the millionaire Crassus, who lent 

him the money so necessary for a successful career as a politician. 

Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey soon combined in what the Romans 

called a triumvirate, but what we should call a “ring.” Pompey 

contributed his soldiers, Crassus, his wealth, and Caesar, his 

influence over the mob. These three men were now really 

masters of Rome. 


154 


Rome 


Caesar was ambitious. The careers of Marius, Sulla, and 
Pompey taught him that the road to power at Rome lay through 
Csesar’s con- a m ilita r y command, which would furnish an army 
quest of Gaul, devoted to his personal fortunes. Accordingly, 
58-50 B.c. after serving a year as consul, he obtained an 
appointment as governor of Gaul. The story of his campaigns 
there he has himself related in the famous Commentaries, still a 
Latin text in the schools. Starting from southern Gaul, which 

was Roman territory at this 
time, he conquered the Gallic 
tribes in one battle after an¬ 
other, twice bridged the Rhine 
and invaded Germany, made 
two military expeditions across 
the Channel to Britain, and 
brought within the Roman 
dominions all the territory 
bounded by the Pyrenees, the 
Alps, the Rhine, and the At¬ 
lantic Ocean. 

Caesar’s conquest of Gaul 
widened the map of the civil- 
Romaniza- ized world from 
tion of Gaul the Mediterra¬ 
nean basin to the shores of the 
Atlantic. Gaul soon received and speedily adopted the Latin 
language, Roman law, and the customs and religion of Rome. 
“Let the Alps sink,” exclaimed the orator Cicero, “the gods 
raised them to shelter Italy from the barbarians, but now they 
are no longer needed.” 

The death of Crassus, during Caesar’s absence in Gaul, dis¬ 
solved the triumvirate. Pompey and Caesar soon began to 
Rivalry of draw apart and at length became open enemies. 
Pompey and Pompey had the support of the Senate, whose 
members believed that Caesar was aiming at 
despotic power. Caesar, on his side, had an army disciplined 
by eight years of fighting. He now led his troops across the 



Marcus Tullius Cicero 

Vatican Museum, Rome 




Rome Mistress of the Mediterranean 155 


Rubicon, the little stream that separated Cisalpine Gaul from 
Italy, and marched on Rome. Thus began another civil war. 
It was fought in Italy, in Spain, in Greece, and in North Africa. 
It ended in the defeat and death of Pompey, the overthrow of 
the senatorial party, and the complete supremacy of Caesar in 
the Roman state. He ruled supreme for only two years, and 
then fell a victim to a group of irreconcilable nobles, who struck 
him down in the Senate-house at Rome (44 b.c.). 



A Roman Aqueduct 

The Pont du Gard near Nimes (ancient Nemausus) in southern France. Built by the 
emperor Antoninus Pius. The bridge spans two hilltops nearly a thousand feet apart. It 
carries an aqueduct with three tiers of massive stone arches at a height of 160 feet above the 
stream. This is the finest and best-preserved aqueduct in existence. 

After Caesar’s death his grandnephew and adopted heir, 
Octavian, joined forces with Antony, the most prominent of 
Caesar’s officers, and together they defeated the 0ctavian 
senatorial party. They then divided the Roman 
world, Octavian taking Italy and the West, Antony taking the 
East, with Alexandria in Egypt as his capital. Before long the 
inevitable civil war broke out between them. It was decided 
in 31 b.c. by the victory of Octavian in a naval battle near 
Actium on the western coast of Greece. Antony and his 








Rome 


156 


Egyptian queen, Cleopatra, fled to Egypt, where both com¬ 
mitted suicide rather than fall into the conqueror’s hands. 
Egypt henceforth became a part of the Roman dominions. 

The battle of Actium closed the century of revolution. Octa- 
vian, now without a rival, stepped into Caesar’s place as master 
The end of of the Roman world. With Caesar and Octavian 
an epoch Europe thus went back to monarchy, to one-man 
rule, such as had always prevailed in the Near East. It is only 
since the end of the eighteenth century that republicanism, as 
a form of government, has begun again to find favor among 
European peoples. 


53 . The Roman Empire 

Few persons have set their stamp more indelibly on the 
pages of history than Octavian, whom we may now call by his 
The emperor more familiar name Augustus (“the Majestic”), 
Augustus conferred upon him by the Senate as a mark of 
respect. Another title borne by him and his successors was that 
of Imperator , from which our word “emperor” is derived. The 
emperor Augustus enjoyed practically unlimited power, since he 
was commander-in-chief of the army. He took care, however, 
to conceal his authority under legal forms and to pose as a 
republican magistrate holding office by appointment of the 
Senate. An American president would have a somewhat 
similar position if he ruled for life instead of for four years, 
selected the members of Congress, and named his successor. 
Augustus thus gave up the externals, only to keep the essentials, 
of monarchy. 

The Roman Empire in the age of Augustus girdled the Medi¬ 
terranean basin and spread over three continents. On the west 
The empire an d sou th it found natural barriers in the Atlantic 
under Ocean and the Sahara Desert. On the east the 

Euphrates River divided it from the kingdom of the 
Parthians. The northern frontier, beyond which lay the Teu¬ 
tonic peoples, required additional conquests for its protection. 
Augustus therefore annexed the districts south of the Danube, 
thus securing the entire line of this wide, impetuous stream as a 














0 


5 


10 


15 















































































































The Roman Empire 


157 


boundary. Between Gaul and Germany the boundary con¬ 
tinued to be the Rhine. 

The successors of Augustus made two important additions 
to the empire. During the reign of Claudius (41-54 a.d.) 
the Romans began to overrun Britain, which had conquest and 
been left alone for nearly a century after Caesar’s Romaniza- 
expeditions to the island. Britain, as far as the tlon of Bntain 
Scottish Highlands, was finally brought under Roman sway 



The wall extended between the Tyne and the Solway, a distance of seventy miles. It 
was built of concrete, faced with square blocks. The height is nearly twenty feet; the thick¬ 
ness, about eight feet. Along the wall were numerous towers and gates, and a little to the 
north of it stretched an earthen rampart protected by a deep ditch. A broad road, lined 
with seventeen military camps, ran between the two fortifications. 


and organized as a province ( Britannia ). It remained a part 
of the Roman Empire for more than three hundred years, be¬ 
coming in this time almost as completely Romanized as Spain 
and Gaul. Northern Scotland ( Caledonia ) and Ireland (. Hiber¬ 
nia) the Romans never attempted to conquer. 

The reign of Trajan (98-117 a.d.) saw the empire enlarged to 
its greatest extent. The conquests which this soldier-emperor 
made in Asia (Armenia and the valley of the Tigris- conquest and 
Euphrates) were abandoned by his successor on Romaniza- 
the throne; but those in Europe, resulting in the tion of Dacia 
annexation of Dacia, north of the Danube, had more permanence. 
Thousands of colonists soon settled in Dacia and brought with 
them Roman civilization. The modern name of this country 


158 


Rome 



(Rumania) and the Latinized language of its people bear witness 
to Rome’s abiding influence there. 

The Roman Empire, at the zenith of its power in the second 
century of our era, included forty-three provinces. The pro- 
Roman vincials enjoyed far better treatment by the new 

citizenship imperial government than they had ever received 
at the hands of the republican Senate and popular assemblies. 


Roman and Dacian 

Louvre, Paris 

A relief of the early second century a.d., probably referring to the Dacian wars of Trajan. 
The contrast between the proud, calm Roman and the wild barbarian is impressive. A 
Dacian hut and an oak tree are shown in the background. 

Furthermore, Augustus and his successors steadily extended 
Roman citizenship to the provincials, and in 212 a.d. Caracalla 
issued a decree making all freemen in the empire citizens. 
Gauls, Britons, Spaniards, North Africans, Egyptians, Jews, 
Syrians, and Greeks were henceforth Romans equally with the 
people of Italy. Rome, instead of being the ruling city of 







The Roman Empire 159 

the empire, thus became merely its capital or seat of govern¬ 
ment. 

The provinces were protected against invasion by a standing 
army of about four hundred thousand men. The soldiers be¬ 
longed to all the different nationalities within the The Roman 
empire and served for a long period of years. When Peace 
not engaged in drill or border warfare, they built the great 
highways which, starting from Rome, penetrated every prov¬ 
ince ; erected bridges and aqueducts; and along the exposed 
frontiers raised forts and walls. These roads and fortifications 
and the living rampart of the legions gave to the provinces 
security and freedom from war. The civilized world within the 
boundaries of the empire rested under what an ancient writer 
called “the immense majesty of the Roman Peace.” 1 

The peace and prosperity of the empire fostered the growth of 
cities. Some had earlier been native settlements, such as 
those in Gaul before the Roman conquest. Others Cities of the 
were the splendid Hellenistic cities in the Near Roman 
East. Many more were of Roman origin, arising Empire 
from the colonies and fortified camps in which citizens and 
soldiers had settled. 2 Rome was the largest of these cities, her 
population being estimated at from one to two millions. 
Alexandria came next with more than half a million people. 
Syracuse ranked as the third metropolis of the empire. Italy 
contained such important towns as Genoa, Florence, Verona, 
Milan, and Ravenna. In Gaul were Marseilles, Arles, Nimes, 
Bordeaux, Lyons, Strasbourg, Cologne, and Mainz. In Spain 
were Barcelona, Cadiz, Cartagena, and Seville. In Britain 
York and London were seats of commerce, Chester and Lincoln 
were military colonies, and Bath was celebrated then, as now, 
for its medicinal waters. Carthage had risen in new splendor 
from its ashes. Athens and Corinth were still homes of Greek 
art and Greek culture. Asia included such ancient and impor¬ 
tant centers as Pergamum, Smyrna, Ephesus, Rhodes, and An- 

1 Pliny, Natural History, xxvii, i. 

2 Several English cities, such as Lancaster, Leicester, Manchester, and Chester, 
show by their names their origin in the Roman castra, or camp. 


i6o 


Rome 


tioch. The student who reads in his New Testament the Acts 
of the Apostles will get a vivid impression of some of these great 
capitals. 

Every city was a miniature Rome, with its forum and senate- 
house, its temples, theaters, and baths, its circus for racing, and 
Appearance its amphitheater for gladiatorial combats. Most 
of the cities G f the municipalities enjoyed an abundant supply 
of water, and some had good sewer systems. The larger towns 
had well-paved, though narrow, streets. The excavations at 
Pompeii have revealed to us the appearance of one of these 
ancient cities. What we find at Pompeii was repeated on a more 
splendid scale in hundreds of places from the Danube to the 
Nile, from Britain to Arabia. 

The cities of Roman origin, especially those in the western 
provinces, copied the political institutions of Rome. Each 
City govern- had a council modeled on the Senate, and a popular 
ment assembly, which chose magistrates corresponding 

to the two consuls and other officials. This Roman system of 
city government descended to the Middle Ages and so passed 
over to our own day. 

The period of the empire formed the golden age of Roman com¬ 
merce. Augustus and his successors put down piracy in the 
Mediterranean, built lighthouses and improved 
harbors, policed the highways, and made travel by 
land both speedy and safe. An imperial currency 1 replaced the 
various national coinages with their limited circulation. The 
vexatious import and export duties, levied by different coun¬ 
tries on foreign products, were swept away. Free trade 
flourished between the cities and provinces of the Roman 
world. 

Roman commerce followed, in general, the routes which had 
been used by the Phoenicians and Greeks. The annexation of 
Commercial Gaul, Britain, and the districts north and south of 
routes the Danube opened up trade channels between 

western and central Europe and the Mediterranean basin. 
Imports from the Far East reached the Mediterranean either by 

* For illustrations of Roman coins see the plate facing page 200. 


Commerce 


The Roman Empire 


161 


caravan through Asia or by ships which sailed across the Indian 
Ocean to the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. 

The slaves at Rome, like those at Athens (§ 40), engaged in 
many occupations. They worked as farm laborers, miners, 
artisans, shopkeepers, and domestic servants. The 
possession of a fine troop of slaves, dressed in hand- Industry 
some livery, formed a favorite way of parading one's wealth. 
Not all manual labor 
was performed by 
slaves, however. Slav¬ 
ery tended to decline, 
partly because there 
were now no more 
wars to furnish cap¬ 
tives for the slave 
markets and partly 
in consequence of the 
growing custom of 
emancipation. The 
free workingmen who 
took the place of 
slaves seem to have 
led a fairly comforta¬ 
ble existence. They 
were not forced to 
labor for long hours in 
grimy, unwholesome 
factories. Slums ex¬ 
isted, but no sweat¬ 
shops. If wages were low, so also was the cost of living. Wine, 
oil, and wheat flour were cheap. The mild climate made 
heavy clothing unnecessary and permitted an outdoor life. 
The public baths — great clubhouses — stood open to every 
one who could pay a trifling fee. Numerous holidays, cele¬ 
brated with games and shows, brightened existence. It is per¬ 
haps significant that Roman annals contain no record of a 
single labor strike. 



The ship lies beside the wharf at Ostia. In the after¬ 
part of the vessel is a cabin with two windows. Notice 
the figure of Victory on the top of the single mast and 
the decoration of the mainsail with the wolf and twins 
The ship is steered by a pair of huge paddles. 








162 


Rome 


We have already seen that the class of peasant proprietors 
disappeared from Italy during republican times (§51). It did 
not revive subsequently. Land was owned by the 
Agriculture em p eror and f ew other rich persons and was culti¬ 
vated by free tenants or by slaves. The person who tilled the 
soil usually depended upon his landlord for tools, domestic 
animals, and other farm equipment. Such great domains had 
long prevailed in the Near East under the Persians and in North 



Terra-Cotta Savings Bank 


Africa under the Carthaginians. The Romans extended this 
system of land holding to Spain, Gaul, Britain, and other prov¬ 
inces, and it afterward became general throughout western 
Europe during the Middle Ages. 


54 . The Graeco-Oriental-Roman World 

The Roman Empire consisted of three sections, differing 
widely in their previous history. 1 There was an Oriental 
Sections of section, which included such parts of the Near 
the Roman East as had come under Roman rule; there was a 
Empire Greek section centering about the ^Egean; and 

there was a distinctively Roman or Latin section, which con¬ 
sisted of the western provinces. In the Near East the Romans 
came only as conquerors, and Roman culture never took deep 
root there. The same was true of the ^Egean lands, where the 

1 See the map between pages 156-157. 





The Graeco-Oriental-Roman World 


163 


Greek language and customs held their ground. In the bar¬ 
barian West, however, the Romans appeared not only as con¬ 
querors, but also as civilizers. The Romanization of the western 
provinces (modern Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, Switzer¬ 
land, and England), together with the Rhine and Danube val¬ 
leys, forms quite the most significant aspect of ancient history. 
It was particularly their law and their language which the 
Romans gave to European peoples. 

The code of the Twelve Tables, framed by the Romans almost 
at the beginning of the republic, was too harsh, technical, and 
brief to meet the needs of a growing state. The 

. ° Roman law 

Romans gradually improved their legal system, 

after they began to rule over conquered territories and to 

become familiar with the customs of foreign peoples. Roman 

law in this way took on an exact, impartial, liberal, and humane 

character. It limited the use of torture to force confession from 

persons accused of wrongdoing. It protected the child against 

a father’s tyranny and wives against ill-treatment by their 

husbands. It provided that a master who killed a slave should 

be punished as a murderer, and even taught that all men are 

originally free by nature and therefore that slavery is contrary 

to natural right. Justice it defined as “the steady and abiding 

purpose to give to every man that which is his own.” 1 

The extension of Roman citizenship to the provincials carried 
this better law throughout the empire. During the reign of 
Justinian (527-565 a.d.) all the sources of Roman The Corpus 
law were collected and put into scientific form. J uris Civilis 
The result was the famous code called the Corpus Juris Civilis , 
the “Body of Civil Law.” It passed from ancient Rome to 
modern Europe, becoming the foundation of the legal systems 
of Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and other Continental 
countries. Even the Common Law of England, which has been 
adopted by the United States, owes some of its principles to the 
Corpus Juris Civilis} The law of Rome, because of this wide- 

1 Institutes, bk. i, tit. 1. 

2 Roman law still prevails in the province of Quebec and the state of Louisiana, 
territories formerly belonging to France, and in all Latin-American countries. 


164 


Rome 


spread influence, is justly regarded as one of her most important 
gifts to the world. 

The Romans carried their language to the barbarian countries 
of the West, as they had carried it throughout Italy. The Latin 
Latin and the s P°ken by Roman colonists, merchants, soldiers, 
Romance and public officials was eagerly taken up by the na- 

languages tives, who tried to make themselves as much like 

their conquerors as possible. This provincial Latin became the 
basis of the so-called Romance languages — French, Italian, 
Spanish, Portuguese, and Rumanian — which arose in the Middle 
Ages. Our English language, though in the main derived 
from the speech of the Teutonic invaders of Britain, contains 
so many words of Latin origin that we can scarcely write a 
sentence without using some of them. The language of Rome, 
as well as the law of Rome, has enriched the intellectual life of 
mankind. 

It is easy, after centuries of Christian progress, to criticize 
numerous features of Roman society during the imperial age. 
Roman The institution of slavery condemned multitudes 

society: the to bare, hard, hopeless lives. Infanticide, espe¬ 
cially of female children, was frequent enough among 
the lower classes, as was suicide among the upper classes. The 
brutal gladiatorial games were a passion with every one, from 
the emperor to his humblest subject. Common as divorce has 
now become, the married state was more and more regarded 
as undesirable. Augustus vainly made laws to encourage 
matrimony and to discourage celibacy. Both educated and 
uneducated people believed firmly in magic, witchcraft, and the 
existence of demons. The decline of the earlier paganism left 
many men and women without a deep religious faith to offset 
the doubt and worldliness of the age. 

Yet this picture needs correction. It may be questioned 
whether the luxury and vice of ancient Rome, Corinth, or 
Alexandria much exceeded what our great mod&n 
capitals can show. During the imperial age, more¬ 
over, remarkable improvements took place in 
social life. There was an increasing kindliness and charity. 


Brighter 
aspects of 
Roman 
society 


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The Graeco-Oriental-Roman World 


165 

The weak and the infirm were better treated. The education of 
the poor was encouraged by the founding of free schools. 
Wealthy citizens lavished their fortunes on such public works 
as baths, aqueducts, and theaters, for the benefit of all classes. 
Even the slaves received better treatment. Imperial laws 
aimed to correct the abuses of neglect, overwork, and cruelty, 
and philosophers recommended to masters the exercise of 
gentleness and mercy toward their bondmen. A great growth 
of the humanitarian spirit was characteristic of the times. 

Just as Alexander’s conquests, by uniting the Near East and 
Greece, produced a Hellenistic civilization, so now the expan¬ 
sion of Rome throughout the Mediterranean basin Interna _ 
and beyond the Alps gave rise to a still wider tionaiiza- 
civilization, which embraced much of Europe, tlon 
with the adjacent parts of Asia and Africa. The Roman Empire 
contained from seventy-five to one hundred million people, at 
peace with one another, possessing the same rights of citizenship, 
obeying one law, speaking Latin in the West and Greek in the 
East, and bound together by trade, travel, and a common 
loyalty to the imperial government. Rome thus made a tre¬ 
mendous advance toward internationalization, toward the forma¬ 
tion of a society embracing civilized mankind. 

Studies 

1. Identify the following dates: 509 b.c. ; 264 b.c.; 146 b.c.; 44 b.c. ; 
and 31 b.c. 2. Show that the early history of Italy centered about the 
Tyrrhenian Sea. 3. Why have Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica been called 
the “suburbs of Italy”? 4. Give the meaning of our English words 
“patrician,” “plebeian,” “dictator,” “tribune,” and “veto.” 5. Com¬ 
pare the Roman Senate and the Senate of the United States as to size, 
term of office of members, conditions of membership, functions, and 
importance. 6. Compare the nature of Roman rule in Italy with that 
of Athens over the Delian League. 7. Trace on the map (facing page 142) 
the principal Roman roads in Italy, with their terminal points. 8. Com¬ 
pare the significance of the Roman victory in the Punic wars with that 
of the Greek victory in the Persian wars. 9. Comment on this state¬ 
ment: “As the rise of Rome was central in history, the Second Punic 
War was central in the rise of Rome.” 10. How do you account for the 
failure of the republican institutions of Rome? n. Compare the extent 


Rome 



166 

of the Roman Empire under Trajan with the extent of Alexander’s empire. 
12. What modern countries are included within the limits of the Roman 
Empire at its greatest extent? 13. What was the Pax Romana? What 
is the Pax Britannica? 14. Give the Roman names of Italy, Spain, Gaul, 
Germany, Britain, Scotland, and Ireland. 15. On an outline map in¬ 
dicate the location of all the Roman cities mentioned in this chapter. 
16. Trace on the map (between pages 156-157) the principal Roman roads 
in the provinces. 17. Compare the Romanization of the ancient world 
with the process of Americanization now going on in the United States. 


Roman Baths at Bath, England 

• 

Bath, the ancient Aquae Sulis, was famous in Roman times for its hot springs. Here 
are very interesting remains, including a large pool, eighty-three by forty feet in size, and 
lined at the bottom with the Roman lead, besides smaller bathing chambers and portions 
of the ancient pipes and conduits. The building and statues are modern restorations. 

















CHAPTER VII 


CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION 1 
55. The Ancient City 

The history of the Greeks and Romans is more than a record 
of what they did as warriors, rulers, and builders of states and 
empires. It includes an account of their accom- The center of 
plishments in such fields as literature, philosophy, ancient life 
science, and the fine arts, as well as a description of their private 
and social life. This life always centered in the city. 

Most Greek and Roman cities sprang from village settlements 
made in prehistoric times. Sometimes a village conquered its 
less powerful neighbors and compelled them to origin of 
unite with it. Sometimes a number of villages the cit y 
lying close together combined for the possession of a hill of 
refuge, called the citadel or acropolis (Latin capitolium). For¬ 
tresses and temples occupied the summit of this hill; at its foot 
lay the market place or public square (Latin forum ); and 
about its rocky side the inhabitants made their homes. Such 
a settlement might in time expand into a walled town, the seat 
of government for all the surrounding region. 

The ancient city was closely built up with narrow streets and 
low, clustering houses. It lacked the miles of suburbs that 
belong to a modern metropolis. The largest and Appearance 
most beautiful buildings were always the temples, 
colonnades, and other public structures. Private houses were 
insignificant in appearance and were often of only one story. 
From a distance, however, their whitewashed walls and red- 
tiled roofs, shining brightly under the sun, must have offered an 
attractive picture. 

1 Webster, Readings in Early European History, chapter xxi, “Roman Life as 
Seen in Pliny’s Letters”; chapter xxii, “A Satirist of Roman Society.” 

167 


Classical Civilization 


168 


Children 


To the free-born inhabitant of Athens or Rome his city was 
at once his country and his church, his club and his home. He 
^ shared in its government; he took part in the 
stately ceremonies that honored its patron god; in 
the city he could indulge his taste for talking and for politics; 
here he found both safety and society. No wonder that an 
Athenian or Roman learned from early childhood to love his 
city with passionate devotion. 

56. Private Life of the Greeks and Romans 

The coming of a child, to parents in antiquity as to parents 
now, was usually a very happy event. Especially welcome was 
the birth of a son. The father felt assured that 
through the boy his old age would be cared for 
and that the family name and the worship of the family ancestors 
would be kept up after his own death. “Male children,” 
said an ancient poet, “are the pillars of the house.’’ 1 The city, 
as well, had an interest in the matter, for a male child meant 
another citizen able to take the father’s place in the army and 
the public assembly. Childlessness was regarded as one of the 
greatest calamities th^t could befall a Greek or a Roman. 

Greek education consisted of three main branches, known as 
gymnastics, music, and grammar. Gymnastic training took 
Greek place in the palestra, an open stretch of ground on 

education the outskirts of the city. Here a private teacher 
gave instruction in the various athletic sports that were so 
popular at the national games (§36). The training in music 
was intended to improve the moral nature of young men and 
to fit them for pleasant social intercourse. They were taught 
to play a stringed intrument, called the lyre, and at the same 
time to sing to their own accompaniment. Grammar, the 
third branch of education, included instruction in writing 
and the reading of the national literature. After a boy had 
learned to write and to read, the schoolmaster took up with 
him the works of the epic poets, especially Homer, besides 
Msop's Fables and other popular compositions. The student 

1 Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, 57. 


Private Life of the Greeks and Romans 169 

learned by heart much of the poetry and at so early an age that 
he always remembered it. Not a few Athenians, it is said, 
could recite the entire Iliad and Odyssey. 



Neues Museum, Berlin 

A painting by Duris on a drinking-cup, or cylix. The picture is divided by two handles. 
In the upper half, beginning at the left: a youth playing the double flute as a lesson to the 
boy before him; a teacher holding a tablet and stylus and correcting a composition; a slave 
(padagogus), who accompanied the children to and from school. In the lower half: a master 
teaching his pupil to play the lyre; a teacher holding a half-opened roll, listening to a recita¬ 
tion by the student before him; a bearded pcedagogus. The inner picture, badly damaged, 
represents a youth in a bath. 


A Roman boy began his school days at about the age of 
seven. He learned to read, to write with a stylus on wax 
tablets, and to cipher by means of the reckoning Roman 
board, or abacus. He received a little instruction education 
in singing and memorized proverbs and maxims, besides the 
laws of the Twelve Tables (§ 48). After Rome began to come 
into close contact with Greece, this curriculum was enlarged 











170 


Classical Civilization 


by the study of the Greek language and literature. The Ro¬ 
mans, in fact, were the first people who made the learning of a 
foreign tongue an essential part of a liberal education. The pro¬ 
ductions of Latin literature, especially Cicero’s orations and 
the poems of Vergil and Horace, were also used as texts for 
study. 

Persons of wealth or noble birth might follow their school 
training by a university course at a Greek city, such as Athens, 
Travel and Alexandria, or Rhodes. Here the Roman youth 
study abroad WO uld listen to lectures on philosophy, delivered 
by the deep thinkers whom Greece produced, and would profit 
by the treasures of art and science preserved in these capitals. 
Many famous Romans, Cicero and Julius Caesar among them, 
thus passed several years abroad in graduate study. 

The wedding customs of the Greeks and Romans presented 
many likenesses. Marriage, among both peoples, was a reli- 
Wedding gious ceremony. The principals and their guests, 
customs dressed in holiday attire, met at the house of the 
bride. In the case of a Roman wedding the auspices (§47) 
were then taken, and the words of the nuptial contract were 
pronounced in the presence of witnesses. The gods of marriage 
were propitiated by a solemn sacrifice, after which the guests 
partook of the wedding banquet. The husband then brought 
his wife to her new abode, escorted by a procession of torch- 
bearers, musicians, and friends, who sang the wedding song. 

An Athenian wife, during her younger years, always remained 
more or less a prisoner. She could not go out except by per- 
Position of mission. She took no part in the feasts and 
women entertainments which her husband gave. She 

lived a life of confinement in that quarter of the house assigned 
to the women for their special abode. Married women at Rome 
enjoyed a far more honorable position. Although early custom 
placed the wife, together with her children, in the power of the 
husband (§ 46), still she possessed many privileges. She did 
not remain all the time at home, but mingled freely in society. 
She was the friend and confidante of her husband, as well as his 
housekeeper. 


Private Life of the Greeks and Romans 171 


There were no great differences between the dress of the two 

classical peoples. Both wore the long, loosely flowing robes 

that contrast so sharply with our tight-fitting 

. 1 ' . & Clothing 

garments. Athenian male attire consisted of but 

two articles, the tunic and the mantle. The tunic was an 

undergarment of wool or linen, without sleeves. Over this was 



Notice the large area of blank wall both on the front and on the side. The front windows 
are very small and evidently of less importance for admitting light than the openings of the 
two atria. At the back is seen the large, well-lighted peristyle. 


thrown a large woolen mantle, so wrapped about the figure as 
to leave free only the right shoulder and head. A man wore 
only his tunic in the house; out of doors and on the street he 
usually wore the mantle over it. The Roman tunica and toga 
were similar garments . 1 

The ancient house lay close to the street line. The exterior 
was plain and simple to an extreme. The owner was satisfied 
if his mansion shut out the noise and dust of the 
highway. He built it, therefore, round one or 
more open courts, which took the place of windows supplying 
light and air. Except for the doorway, the front of the house 


The dwelling 


The corresponding names of women’s garments were stola and pallet. 



172 


Classical Civilization 


presented a bare, blank surface, only relieved by narrow slits or 
lattices in the wall of the upper story. The street side of the 
house wall received a coating of whitewash or of fine marble 
stucco. The roof of the house was covered with clay tiles. 
This style of domestic architecture is still common in Mediter¬ 
ranean lands. A classical dwelling indoors often had a most 
attractive appearance, as we can tell from the remains of some of 
the houses excavated at Pompeii. 



Ground Plan of a Pompeian House 


1. Passage 6'. Storeroom 

2, 2. Shops 7. Wing 

3. Atrium 8. Master’s room 

4, 4. Stairways to upper floor g. Passage 

5. Porter’s room 10. Peristyle 

6, 6. Sleeping rooms 


11. House shrines 

12. 14. Sleeping rooms 

13. Kitchen 

15. Dining room 

16. Back door 


The visitor at one of these ancient houses first entered a 
small vestibule, from which a narrow passage led to the heavy 
Th t ' ” oa k en door. A dog was sometimes kept chained 

in this hallway; in Pompeii there is a picture of one 
worked in mosaic on the floor with the warning beneath it, 
“Beware of the dog.” Having made known his presence by 
using the knocker, the guest was ushered into the reception 
room, or atrium. This was a large apartment covered with a 
roof, except for a hole in the center admitting light and air. 
A marble basin directly underneath caught the rain water which 
came through the opening. 
















































Social Life of the Greeks and Romans 


i73 



A corridor from the atrium led into the peristyle, a spacious 
court, open to the sky and inclosed by a colonnade or portico. 
This delightful spot, rather than the formal atrium , 
served as the center of family life. About it were The penstyle 
grouped the bedchambers, bathrooms, dining room, kitchen, 
and other apartments of a 
comfortable mansion. 


57. Social Life of the 
Greeks and Romans 


The ancient Athenian 
was no sluggard. He got 
up at sunrise 

Morning 

or even be- round of an 

fore, washed Athenian 
. . , . gentleman 

his face and 
hands, put on his scanty 
garments, and was soon 
ready for the street. Be¬ 
fore leaving the house he 
broke his fast with a meal 
as simple as the European 
“rolls and coffee” — 
in this case merely a 
few mouthfuls of bread 
dipped in wine. After breakfast he might call on his friends 
or perhaps ride into the country and visit his estates. About ten 
o’clock (which the Athenians called “full market”), he would 
be pretty sure to find his way to the Agora, or market place 
of Athens. The shops at this time were crowded with pur¬ 
chasers, and every sociable citizen was to be found in them or in 
the neighboring colonnades. 

The public resorts were deserted at noon, when the Athenian 
returned home to enjoy a light meal and a rest occupations 
during the heat. As the day grew cooler, men of the after- 
again went out and visited a gymnasium, such noon 
as the Lyceum or the Academy, in the city suburbs. Here were 


Barber Cutting Hair 

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 


174 


Classical Civilization 


grounds for running, wrestling, discus-throwing, and other sports, 
as well as rooms for bathing and anointing. While the younger 
men busied themselves in such active exercises, those of maturer 
years might be content with less vigorous games or with conver¬ 
sation on political or philosophical themes. 

The principal meal of the day came about sunset. The 
master of the house, if he had no guests, shared the repast with 
The evening his wife and children. The ordinary fare was very 
meal much what it is now in Greece — bread, olives, 

figs, cheese, and a little meat as an occasional luxury. The 

diners refreshed them¬ 
selves with wine mixed 
with water. The remain¬ 
der of the evening would 
be devoted to. conversa¬ 
tion and music and possi¬ 
bly a little reading. As 
a rule the Athenian went 
early to bed. 

A Roman of the higher 
class, who lived in late 
Morning republican or 
early impe¬ 
rial times, 
passed through much the 
same daily routine as an Athenian citizen. He rose at an early 
hour and after a light breakfast attended to his private business 
with the help of his steward and manager. He then took his 
place in the atrium to meet the crowd of poor dependents who 
came to pay their respects to their patron and to receive their 
usual morning alms — either food or sufficient money to buy a 
modest dinner. Having greeted his visitors and perhaps helped 
them in legal or business matters, the noble entered his litter 
and was carried down to the Forum. He might visit the law 
courts to plead a case for himself or for his clients, or, if he were 
a member of the Senate, he would take part in the delibera¬ 
tions of that body. At eleven o’clock, when the ordinary 



A Roman Litter 

The litter consists of an ordinary couch with four 
posts and a pair of poles. Curtains fastened to the 
rod above the canopy shielded the occupant from 
observation. 


round of a 
Roman noble 



Social Life of the Greeks and Romans 


i75 


duties of the morning were over, he would return home to eat 
his luncheon and enjoy the midday rest, or siesta. The prac¬ 
tice of having a nap in the heat of the day became so general 
that at noon the streets of a Roman city had the same deserted 
appearance as at midnight. 

After an hour of refreshing sleep it was time for the regular 
exercise out of doors in the Campus Martius or indoors at one 
of the large city baths. Then came one of the The after _ 
chief pleasures of a Roman’s existence — the daily noon exercise 
bath. It was taken ordinarily in one of the public and bath 
bathing establishments, or thermce, to be found in every Roman 



town. A Roman bath was a luxurious affair. After undressing, 
the bathers entered a warm anteroom and sat for a time on 
benches, in order to perspire freely. This was a precaution 
against the danger of passing too suddenly into the hot bath, 
which was taken in a large tank of water sunk in the middle 
of the floor. Then came an exhilarating cold plunge and 
anointing with perfumed oil. The bathers afterward rested on 
the couches with which the resort was supplied and passed the 
time in reading or conversation until the hour for dinner. 

Dinner with the Romans, as with the Greeks, formed the 

principal meal of the day. It was usually a social 
r . , 1 . ,, Dinner 

function. The host and his guests reclined on 

couches arranged about a table. The Romans borrowed 





176 


Classical Civilization 


from the Greeks the custom of ending a banquet with a sym¬ 
posium, or drinking-bout. The tables were cleared of dishes, 
and the guests were anointed with perfumes and crowned with 
garlands. Professional performers often entertained the guests 
with music, dancing, pantomimes, and feats of jugglery. 

The Athenians celebrated many religious festivals. One of 
the most important was the Great Panathenaea, 1 held every 

Athenian re- fourth y ear in the month ° f 
ligious fes- July. Athletic contests and 

tlvals poetical recitations, sacrifices, 

feasts, and processions honored the goddess 
Athena, who presided over the Athenian city. 
The festivals of the god Dionysus, which took 
place in midwinter and spring, were cele¬ 
brated with dramatic performances. The 
tragedies and comedies composed for these 
entertainments have a place among the mas¬ 
terpieces of Greek literature (§58). 

A Greek play would seem strange enough 
to us; there was no elaborate scenery, no 
Features of a raised stage until late Roman 
Greek play times, and little lively action. 
The actors, who were all men, never num¬ 
bered more than three or four. They wore 
elaborate costumes, and tragic actors, in 
addition, were made to appear larger than 
human with masks, padding, and thick-soled boots, or buskins. 
The narrative was mainly carried on by the chorus, which 
was stationed in the dancing ring, or orchestra. The per¬ 
formances occupied the three days of the Dionysiac festivals, 
beginning early in the morning and lasting till night. All 
this time was necessary because they formed contests for a 
prize which the people awarded to the poet and chorus 
whose presentation was judged of highest excellence. The 
theater held an important place in the life of Athens and 
indeed of all Greek cities. It formed a partial substitute for 

1 Panathenaic means “belonging to all the Athenians.” 



Tragic Actor 

British Museum, London 


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Social Life of the Greeks and Romans 


I 77 


our pulpit and press, since it dealt either with religious and moral 
themes or with leading personages and questions of the day. 

Pantomimes formed the staple amusement of the Roman 
theater. In these performances a single dancer, by movements 
and gestures, represented myth- Pantomime 
ological scenes and love stories, and vaude- 
The actor took several charac- viUe at Rome 
ters in succession and a chorus accompanied 
him with songs. There were also “vaude¬ 
ville” entertainments, with all manner of 
jugglers, rope dancers, acrobats, and clowns 
to amuse a people who found no pleasure in 
the refined productions of the Greek stage. 

The “games of the circus” took place at 
Rome chiefly in the Circus Maximus. Char¬ 
iot races furnished the principal 

Chariot races _ 

attraction, hour horses were A Dancing Girl 



usually harnessed to a chariot, though 
sometimes the drivers showed their skill by 
handling as many as six or seven horses. 
The contestants whirled seven times around 


A Greek bronze statu¬ 
ette found in a sunken 
galley off the coast of 
Tunis. The galley had 
been wrecked while on its- 
way to Rome carrying a 


the low wall, or spina , which divided the load of art objects to 

i . r . decorate the villas of 

race course. The shortness of the stretches weaIthy nobles> This , 


and the sharp turns about the spina must statuette was doubtless a 
. , ,, ... , £ , life-like copy of some well- 

have prevented the attainment of great entertainer. The 


speed. A race, nevertheless, was a most dancer’s pose suggests the. 
exciting sport. What we should call “foul- ^her costume^the 
, ing” was permitted and even encouraged, modern" hobble skirt.” 
The driver might turn his team against 
another or might endeavor to upset a rival’s car. It was a 
very tame contest that did not have its accompaniment of 
broken chariots, fallen horses, and killed or injured drivers. 

The Circus Maximus was often used for a variety of animal 
shows. Fierce wild beasts, brought from every quarter of the 
empire, were turned loose to slaughter one another, Animal- 
or to tear to pieces condemned criminals. There baitings 
were also contests between animals and men. Such amusements 


1 7 8 


Classical Civilization 


did something to satisfy the lust for blood in the Roman popu¬ 
lace— a lust which was more completely satisfied by the 
gladiatorial combats. 

Exhibitions of gladiators were known in Italy long before 
they became popular at Rome. The combats probably started 
Gladiatorial from the savage practice of sacrificing prisoners 
shows or s l a ves at the funeral of their master. The 


custom then arose of allowing the victims a chance for their lives 
by having them fight one another, the conquerors being spared 



The Circus Maximus (Restoration) 


for future battles. It was only a step from this to keeping 
trained slaves as gladiators. The number of such exhibitions 
increased greatly during the imperial age. The emperor 
Trajan, for example, to celebrate his victories over the Dacians 
(§ 53), exhibited no less than ten thousand men within the space 
of four months. The gladiators belonged to various classes, 
according to the defensive armor they wore and the style of 
fighting they employed. When a man was wounded and unable 
to continue the struggle, he might appeal to the spectators. 
If he had fought well, the people indicated their willingness to 
spare him by waving their handkerchiefs; otherwise, they 
turned down their thumbs as the signal for his deathblow. 















Greek Literature 


179 


These hideous exhibitions continued in different parts of the 
Roman Empire until the fifth century of our era. 

Gladiatorial combats, chariot races, and dramatic shows were 
free performances. They became the chief pleasure of life for 
the lower classes in the Roman city. The days of « Bread and 
their celebration were public holidays, which in the the games of 
fourth century a.d. numbered no less than one the circus ' 
hundred and seventy-five. The once-sovereign people of Rome 




From a stucco relief on the tomb of Scaurus, Pompeii. Beginning at the left are two 
fully armed horsemen fighting with lances. Behind them are two gladiators, one of whom is 
appealing to the people. Then follows a combat in which the defeated party raises his hand 
in supplication for mercy. The lower part of the relief represents fights with various wild 
beasts. 


became a lazy, worthless rabble, fed by the state and amused 
with the games. It was well said by an ancient author that the 
Romans wanted only two things to make them happy “ bread 
and the games of the circus.” 1 


58. Greek Literature 

The literature of Greece begins with epic poetry. An epic 
may be defined as a long narrative in verse, dealing with some 

1 Panem et circenses (Juvenal, x, 80-81). 







i8o 


Classical Civilization 


large and noble theme. The earliest epic poetry of the Greeks 
was inseparable from music. Wandering minstrels sang at feasts 
in the palaces of kings and accompanied their 
Epic poetry w * t ] 1 ^ mus j c 0 f the clear-toned lyre. The 

singer afterward gave up the lyre and depended for effect 
solely on the poetic power of his narrative. Such minstrel 
songs were finally combined into long poems. The most famous 
are the Iliad and the Odyssey , works which the Greeks attrib¬ 
uted to Homer (§35). 

Several centuries after Homer the Greeks began to create 


new 



Sappho 

Greek gem in the British Museum, London 


form of po¬ 
etic expres- 
Lyric poetry . . 

sion — the 

lyric. They found in 
short poems, accom¬ 
panied by the flute or 
a medium for 
utterance of per¬ 
sonal feelings which was 
not furnished by the 
long and cumbrous epic. 
The love poems of Sap¬ 
pho, who lived in the 
island of Lesbos, were 
Only two of her productions have 


celebrated in antiquity 
reached us intact. The greatest lyric poet was Pindar. We 
still possess forty-four of his odes, which were written in honor 
of victorious athletes at the Olympian and other national games 
(§ 36). Pindar’s verses were so popular that he became, as it 
were, the “poet laureate” of Greece. 

The three great masters of the tragic drama (§57) lived and 
wrote in Athens during the splendid half-century between 
Athenian the Persian and the Peloponnesian wars. They 

tragedy are sa jq to have written altogether nearly three 

hundred plays. Only thirty-two have come down to us. Aeschy¬ 
lus, the first of the tragic poets, had fought at Marathon and 
Salamis. One of his works, the Persians , is a magnificent 


Greek Literature 


181 


song of triumph for the victory of Greece. It is the only Greek 
tragedy in existence which takes its theme, not from mythology, 
but from history. Sophocles, while yet a young man, gained the 
prize in a dramatic contest with Aeschylus. His plays mark the 
perfection of Greek tragedy. After the death of Sophocles the 
Athenians revered him as a hero and honored his memory with 
yearly sacrifices. Euripides was the third of the Athenian 
dramatists and the most generally popular. His fame reached 
far beyond his native city. 

Athenian comedy during the fifth century b.c. is represented 
by the plays of Aristophanes. He was both a great poet and a 
great satirist. In some of his comedies he attacks Athenian 
the demagogues who were prominent in Athenian comedy 
politics, while in others he ridicules the philosophers, makes 
fun of the ordinary citizen’s delight in serving on law courts 
and trying cases, and criticizes those responsible for the unfor¬ 
tunate expedition to Sicily. The plays of Aristophanes 
were performed before admiring audiences of thousands of 
citizens and hence must have had much influence on public 
opinion. 

The “father of history,” Herodotus, flourished about the 

middle of the fifth century b.c. Though a native of Asia 

Minor, Herodotus spent some of the best years of 

. ... History 

his life at Athens, mingling in its brilliant society 

and coming under the influences, literary and artistic, of that 

city. He traveled widely in the Greek world and in the Near 

East, as a preparation for his great task of writing an account 

of the rise of the Oriental nations and the struggle between 

Greece and Persia. Herodotus was not a critical historian, 

diligently sifting truth from fable. Where he can he gives us 

facts. Where facts are lacking, he tells interesting stories in a 

most winning style. Another famous author was Thucydides, 

an Athenian who lived during the epoch of the Peloponnesian 

War and became the historian of that contest. He omits as 

useless the stories which Herodotus would have narrated, but, 

in return, he presents us with a fair and accurate account of 

things just as they happened. This is the first business of the 


182 


Classical Civilization 


Biography 


historian, and so Thucydides must be considered the first 
scientific writer of history. 

Greek biography is best represented by the work of Plutarch, 
who wrote during the first century of our era. Greece at that 
time was only a province of the Roman Empire; 
the days of her greatness had long since passed 
away. Plutarch thus had rather a melancholy task in com¬ 
piling his Parallel Lives. In this book he relates, first the 
life of an eminent Greek, then of a famous Roman who in 
some way resembled him; and ends the account with a short 
comparison of the two men. Plutarch had a wonderful gift of 
sympathy for his heroes and a keen eye for what was dramatic 
in their careers. It is not surprising, therefore, that Plutarch 
has always been a favorite author. No other ancient writer 
gives us so vivid and intimate a picture of the classical world. 

It is clear from the foregoing survey that the Greeks were 
pioneers in many forms of literature. They first composed ar- 
Originaiity of tistic epic poems. They invented lyric and dramatic 
Greek poetry. They were the first to write real histories 

and biographies. They also rose to eminence in 
oratory. Their original work exerted great influence on the 
Romans, whose writings were always based on Greek models. 


59. Roman Literature 

The first Roman author whose productions make a real 
claim as literature, and as literature of a very high quality, 
was the famous orator Cicero. He was not an 

Cicero 

original thinker, but he created a style for Latin 
prose composition which has been admired and imitated by 
literary men even to our own day. Latin, in his hands, became 
a magnificent instrument for the expression of human thought. 
Cicero’s qualities as an author are shown, not only by his 
Orations , but also by the numerous Epistles which he wrote to 
friends and correspondents in all parts of the Roman world. 
Besides their historical interest Cicero’s letters are models 
of what good letters ought to be — the expression of the writer’s 
real thoughts and feelings in simple, unstilted language. Cicero 


Roman Literature 


183 


also composed a number of Dialogues , chiefly on philosophical 
themes. Most of these are popularizations of Greek writings. 

Another eminent statesman — Julius Caesar — won success 
in literature. We possess his invaluable Commentaries on the 
Gallic and Civil wars. These works, though brief c ^ 
and in most parts rather dull, are highly praised 
for their simple, concise style and their mastery of the art of 
rapid narration. 

The reign of Augustus marks a real epoch in the history 
of Latin literature. The most 
famous poet of this Vergil and 
period was Vergil. Horace 
TheJEneid, which he undertook 
at the suggestion of Augustus, 
is his best-known work. In 
form the poem is a narrative 
of the adventures of the Trojan 
hero, iLneas, but its real theme 
is the growth of Rome under 
the fostering care of the gods. 

The HZneid, though unfinished 
at the author’s death, became 
at once what it has always remained — the only ancient epic 
worthy of comparison with the Iliad or the Odyssey. Another 
member of the Augustan circle was Vergil’s friend and fellow- 
worker, Horace. He reproduced in Latin verse the forms, and 
sometimes even the substance, of his Greek models, but what 
he borrowed he made his own by the added beauty which he 
gave to it. His Odes are perhaps the most admirable examples 
of literary art to be found in any language. 

The most famous prose writer of this period was Livy. His 
History of Rome , beginning with Romulus and extending to 
Augustus, traced the rise and growth of the 
Roman state during eight centuries of triumphal 
progress. It did in prose what Vergil’s Hdneid had done in verse. 

Roman literature has many excellencies. The writings 
of Cicero, Vergil, Horace, Livy, and other great Latin authors 



Horace 


184 


Classical Civilization 


measure not far below the Greek masterpieces. In the Middle 
Survival of Ages, when the literature of Greece was either neg- 
Roman lected or forgotten by the peoples of western Eu- 

literature r0 p e> 0 £ R ome was s till read and enjoyed. 

A knowledge of it forms even to-day an essential part of a 
* * classical ’ ’ education. 


60. Philosophic Thought 

The Greeks really founded philosophy, which means an 
intelligent effort to discover the reason and causes of things. 
The “ philoso- The earliest speculations of this sort go back to the 
phers” sixth century B.c., when a few bold thinkers in 

Ionia and other parts of the Greek world began to search out 
the mysteries of nature. These men called themselves “ phi¬ 
losophers”— lovers of wisdom. They were not content to 
follow the poets who declared that gods brought about the 
changes of night and day, the succession of the seasons, thunder¬ 
storms, eclipses, and other physical phenomena. They sought 
a natural origin for everything. One of them taught that the 
earth was formed from water or moisture. Another substituted 
air for water. Another considered fire to be the universal first 
substance. These ideas, we know, were quite wrong, but by 
trying to understand the world, instead of simply repeating 
myths about it, the “philosophers” began an intellectual 
movement that has continued to our own time. 

A new class of thinkers, known as sophists, appeared about 
the middle of the fifth century b.c. They gave up the study 

. of the material universe as futile, and proposed 
The sophists ^ ^ 

rather to study man himself. Man, they declared, 

is the measure of all things. The sophists traveled throughout 

Greece, gathering the young men about them and lecturing 

for pay on subjects of practical interest. Rhetoric and oratory, 

so essential for success in a public career, were also taught by 

the sophists. Sometimes they only pretended to be wise and 

were not. Indeed, the name of “sophist” came to mean one 

who instructs his pupils how to deceive people by arguments 

which they do not themselves believe. Many sophists, however. 


Philosophic Thought 


185 


were really brilliant thinkers, who helped to spread more reason¬ 
able ideas about politics, morals, and religion. 

No one did more in this direction than Socrates the Athenian, 
who taught during the period of the Peloponnesian War (§ 41). 
Socrates resembled the sophists in the possession 

Socrates 

of an inquiring mind which questioned every com¬ 
mon belief and superstition. He went beyond them in his 
emphasis on matters of everyday morality. Thus, he asked 
where is the difference between justice and injustice, between 
virtue and vice; what is the beautiful, what the ugly; what 
is noble, what base; who is the good citizen and who the bad ? 
Socrates, then, was a 
student of conduct, 
whose chief aim was 
to make people better. 

A poor man, he would 
neither work at his 
trade of sculptor nor 
(as did the sophists) 
accept money for his 
instruction. He walked 
the streets, barefoot and 
half-clad, happy if he 

could find some gray-haired elder whose ignorance he might 
expose in argument, or some younger man whose sham knowl¬ 
edge melted like mist before his shrewd questioning. For Soc¬ 
rates never preached, he only discussed; he taught not by 
formal lectures, but through conversation. Though he wrote 
nothing, his teaching and personality made a deep impression 
on his contemporaries. The Delphic oracle declared that no 
one in the world was wiser than Socrates. Nevertheless, his 
criticism of popular beliefs raised up many enemies for him, 
even in Athens where people more than elsewhere enjoyed free 
speech. Late in life he was tried and condemned on charges 
of impiety and of corrupting the youth of Athens with his doc¬ 
trines. The old philosopher suffered death, in consequence, a 
martyr to the cause of truth. 



Socrates and Plato 









186 


Classical Civilization 


Plato 


One of the members of the Socratic circle was Plato, a wealthy 
noble who abandoned a public career for the attractions of 
philosophy. After the death of Socrates, Plato 
traveled widely in the Greek world and even 
visited Egypt, where he interviewed the learned priests. On 
his return to Athens he began teaching in the garden and 
gymnasium called the Academy. His writings, known collec¬ 
tively as Dialogues , are cast in the form of question and answer 
that Socrates had used. In most of them Plato makes Socrates 
the chief speaker. One of these 
productions, the Republic , describes 
an ideal commonwealth; another 
work, the Laws, sets forth an ideal 
legal code. Three very beautiful 
dialogues 1 present a touching pic¬ 
ture of the last days of Socrates. 
Plato’s works are both profound in 
thought and admirable in style. 
The Athenians used to say that if 
Zeus had spoken Greek he would 
have spoken it as did Plato. 

Aristotle, another eminent thinker, 
was not an Athenian 
by birth, but he passed 
many years in Athens, first as a 
pupil of Plato, who called him the “mind” of the Academy, 
and then as the head of his own school in the Lyceum. 
Aristotle seems to have taken all knowledge for his prov¬ 
ince. He investigated the ideas underlying the arts of 
rhetoric and poetry; he gathered the constitutions of many 
Greek states and drew from them some general principles of 
politics; he examined the acts and beliefs of men in order to 
write books on ethics. Perhaps his supreme achievement was 
the creation of logic, the science of reasoning. Everywhere 
he sought for facts; everything he tried to bring to the test 



Aristotle 

From Herculaneum; probably work of 
the fourth century b.c. 


Aristotle 


1 The Apology , Crito, and Phczdo. 


Scientific Thought 


187 


of personal observation. His books were reverently studied 
for centuries after his death and are still used in our universities. 

The system of philosophy called Epicureanism was founded 

by a Greek named Epicurus. He taught in Athens during the 

earlier part of the third century b.c. Epicurus 
. .. , . . . Epicureanism 

believed that pleasure is the sole good, pam, the 
sole evil. He meant by pleasure not so much the passing enjoy¬ 
ments of the hour as the permanent happiness of a lifetime. In 
order to be happy men should not trouble themselves with use¬ 
less luxuries, but should lead the “simple life.” They must 
be virtuous, for virtue will bring more real satisfaction than 
vice. Some of the followers of Epicurus seemed to find in his 
philosophic system justification for free indulgence in every 
appetite and passion. Even to-day, when we call a person an 
“Epicurean,” we think of him as a selfish pleasure seeker. 

The noblest of all pagan philosophies was Stoicism, founded 
by Zeno, a contemporary of Epicurus. Virtue, said the Stoic, 
consists in living “according to nature,” that is, gtoicism 
according to the Universal Reason or Divine Prov¬ 
idence that rules the world. The followers of this philosophy 
tried, therefore, to ignore the feelings and exalt the reason as a 
guide to conduct. They practiced self-denial, despised the 
pomps and vanities of the world, and sought to rise above such 
emotions as grief, fear, hope, and joy. The doctrines of Stoi¬ 
cism gained many adherents among the Romans and through 
them became a real moral force in classical society (§ 66). 

61. Scientific Thought 

Philosophy and science were not at first distinguished by the 
Greeks. The sixth-century “philosophers” might also be called 
scientists, since they studied nature and tried to Ri se 0 f Greek 
explain her operations in a natural manner. Even science 
some of the later philosophers contributed to scientific knowl¬ 
edge. Plato and his followers did useful work in mathematics 
and astronomy, while Aristotle’s careful descriptions of the 
habits, organs, and anatomy of animals entitle him to rank as the 
founder of zoology. His pupil, Theophrastus, who succeeded 


188 


Classical Civilization 


him in the headship of the school in the Lyceum, created the 
science of botany. Both Aristotle and Theophrastus in their 
researches utilized the collections of animals and plants made 
by the trained observers who accompanied Alexander the Great 
to Asia. 

The most rapid advance in scientific knowledge took place 
during the Graeco-Oriental, or Hellenistic Age, and especially 
Flourishing of at Alexandria (§ 43). After the foundation of the 
Greek science Library and Museum, nearly every scientist was a 
professor there or had at one time studied in its schools. The 
Hellenistic students must have been greatly helped by the 
scientific lore of Egypt and Babylonia (§ 30), now disclosed 
to them by the priests and other learned men of those old 
countries. Graeco-Oriental science, in turn, passed over to the 
Romans and later became known to the Arabs and to the 
Christian peoples of western Europe. 

The Greeks never accomplished much in arithmetic, because 
their way of writing numbers and counting was even clumsier 
Mathemati s ^han the Roman method with which we are still 
familiar (§ 11). Geometry, however, had a marked 
development. Euclid, who lived at Alexandria about 300 b.c., 
composed a geometrical textbook known as the Elements. Its 
theorems are still the basis*of modern works on the subject. 
When asked by the king of Egypt whether one could not learn 
geometry more easily than by studying this book, Euclid 
replied, “There is no royal road to geometry.” Another math¬ 
ematician founded trigonometry, the measurement of angles. 
Archimedes of Syracuse, who had once studied at Alexandria, 
was the most eminent mathematician of antiquity. He had 
many achievements to his credit, among them the calculation 
of the value of 7r (pi)- 

Archimedes likewise made many discoveries in physical 
science, including specific gravity and the law of floating bodies. 

A water screw of his device is still in use. He also 
studied the principles of the lever and the pulley. 
“Give me a fulcrum on which to rest,” he said, “and I will 
move the earth.” What Archimedes and his successors learned 


Physics 


Scientific Thought 


189 


about engineering and mechanical devices was taken over by 
the Romans, who put this theoretical knowledge to practical 
use in building. 

The Greek achievement in astronomy was impressive. Aris¬ 
tarchus of Samos, a scientist of the third century b.c., proved the 
rotation of the earth on its axis and also made 
rough estimates of its distance from the moon and 
the sun. He further maintained that the earth moves round 
the sun in a regular orbit. This theory did not secure ac¬ 
ceptance in antiquity, and Aristarchus was even charged with 
impiety for suggesting it. Men preferred to believe that the 
center of the universe was the earth, about which revolved 
sun, planets, and fixed stars. The greatest astronomer before 
the Christian era was Hipparchus, who made his observations 
at Rhodes. He worked at the huge task of counting and 
arranging the stars in constellations. More than a thousand 
were included in his catalogue. Hipparchus also determined 
the length of the solar year within a few minutes of the correct 
time and devised the modern method of fixing the locations 
of places by means of their latitude and longitude. Greek 
astronomy was put into final shape by Ptolemy of Alexandria, 
who lived in the second century of our era. His Almagest 
(“ The Greatest Work ”), a name given to it by the Arabs, was 
the standard treatise on astronomy during the Middle Ages. 

The work of Hippocrates of Cos (born about 460 b.c.) in 
freeing the art of healing from superstition and ignorance has 
gained for him the title “father of medicine.” Medicine and 
His high ideals as to medical practice were embod- anatom y 
ied in the so-called “ Hippocratic Oath,” which is still recited 
by graduates of our medical schools. Medicine and anatomy 
received much attention at Alexandria, where there were dis¬ 
secting rooms, charts, and models for the study of the human 
body. Surgical operations, sometimes of a major type, were 
performed, and anaesthesia, or unconsciousness, was produced 
by the use of various drugs. Greek scientists discovered that 
the brain is the center of the nervous system, that nerves exist 
to transmit the sensations and impulses, and that the blood is 


o 



190 


The World According to Ptolemy 

See note on next page. 
















































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































Scientific Thought 


191 


borne in streams to every part of the body. Classical knowl¬ 
edge of medicine and anatomy was gathered up and system¬ 
atized in the writing of Galen of Pergamum (born about 130 

a. d.) . He remained the supreme authority in these fields for 
more than a thousand years thereafter. 

The colonizing activity of the Greeks introduced them to the 
lands and peoples about the Mediterranean, and the conquests 
of Alexander the Great much enlarged their knowl¬ 
edge of the Near East. They also gained some Ge °g ra P h y 
acquaintance with other parts of the world. We have already 
referred to the exploring voyage made by the Carthaginian 
Hanno along the northwestern coast of Africa (§ 25). His 
logbook is still extant in a Greek translation. About 300 

b. c. Pytheas of Massilia sailed along the shores of Spain and 
Gaul and spent some time in Britain. He was probably the 
first Greek to visit that island. Pytheas has to tell, also, of 
another island called Thule, the most northerly part of the 
earth, beyond which the sea becomes thickened and like jelly. 
The latter statement probably refers to the drift ice found off 
the coast of Norway. When we consider how little had been 
previously known of northwestern Europe, we must admit 
that Pytheas belongs among the world’s great explorers. 1 

All this new knowledge was soon gathered together by Era¬ 
tosthenes, a learned librarian of Alexandria, who lived in the 
third century b.c. He may be regarded as the e ^ ^ 
founder of scientific geography. Some students 
before his time had already concluded that the earth is spherical 
and not flat, and guesses had even been made as to its circum¬ 
ference. Eratosthenes, by observing the shadows cast by the 

1 For the routes of Hanno and Pytheas see the map on page 190. 

Ptolemy shows some knowledge of central and southern Asia, but India 
is not represented as a peninsula, and a huge gulf, with China on its far¬ 
ther shore, is placed in the remote east. The size of Ceylon is exaggerated. 
Ptolemy’s idea of the British Isles is vague, and he knows practically noth¬ 
ing of the Baltic Sea, marking only a small island as Scandia, or Scandinavia. 
Notice, however, that he represents the Nile as rising in two lakes and that 
he marks the Mountains of the Moon in their approximate location. 



192 


Classical Civilization 


Ptolemy 


sun at two places about seven hundred miles apart was able to 
estimate the circumference with approximate accuracy. 1 He 
also suggested that were it not for the vast extent of the Atlantic 
Ocean one might sail westward from Spain to India along the 
same parallel of latitude. 

Still another Alexandrian scientist, the astronomer Ptolemy, 
was also an eminent geographer. His famous map of the world 
summed up the geographical knowledge of the 
ancients. Ptolemy’s inaccuracies are obvious: his 
Europe extends too far west; his Africa is too wide; and his 
Asia is vastly exaggerated at its eastern extremity. By over¬ 
estimating the distance eastward from Spain to China, he 
consequently diminished the real distance westward from Spain 
to China by nearly four thousand miles. Centuries later, when 
Columbus set out on his memorable voyage, he relied on Ptolemy’s 
calculation and never imagined what great masses of land and 
water lay between the coast of Europe and that of Asia. It is 
fortunate that the error arose, else Columbus might never have 
undertaken to sail across the Atlantic. Ptolemy also believed 
that Africa was joined to a great continent in the Indian Ocean. 
This mistaken notion about the unknown southland later led to 
exploring voyages in search of it, and particularly to Captain 
Cook’s discoveries in the Pacific during the eighteenth century. 
Ptolemy’s work, in spite of his inaccuracies, will always remain 
one of the monuments of classical science. After his time no 
important additions were made to geographical learning until 
late in the Middle Ages. 

The Greeks in scientific study seem to have gone about as far 

as it was possible to go without the aid of elaborate apparatus. 

, . , They had no real telescopes or microscopes, no 

Ancient and . , . ’ 

modern manner s compass or chronometer, no very delicate 

balances, and nothing comparable to our labo¬ 
ratories for physics, chemistry, and other sciences. 
Modern scientists are perhaps not better thinkers than were 


science 

compared 


1 The real circumference of the earth at the equator is 25,000 English miles. 
Eratosthenes estimated it at 25,000 geographical miles, which is about one-seventh 
part in excess. 


Greek Art 


i93 


those of antiquity, but they have infinitely better instruments 
for research and can make careful experiments where the ancients 
had to rely only on shrewd guesses. It should be noticed, also, 
that the Greeks did little toward linking up their pure science 
with its applications to the practical arts. The classical world 
does not show much advance over the Oriental world in methods 
of manufacturing and the use of machinery and labor-saving 
devices. The Greeks, in spite of their intellectual eminence, 
were not an inventive people. For the great inventions which 
have donfe and are still doing so much to transform our lives we 
must wait until modern times. 

62. Greek Art 

The existing monuments of Greek architecture — chiefly 
ruined temples — afford some idea of its leading characteristics. 
The building materials were limestone and white 
marble. The blocks of stone were not bound Architecture 
together by cement, but by metal clamps which held them in a 
firm grip. It was usual to color the ornamental parts of a 
temple and the open spaces that served as a background for 
sculpture. The Greeks did not employ the principle of the 
arch, in order to cover large spaces with a vaulted ceiling. Their 
temples and other public buildings had only flat ceilings, resting 
on long rows of columns. The column probably developed from 
the wooden post or tree trunk used in timber construction. The 
capital at the top of the column originated in the square wooden 
slab which supported the heavy beam of the roof. 

The two Greek orders of architecture, Doric and Ionic, 1 are 
distinguished mainly by differences in the treatment of the col¬ 
umn. The Doric column has no base of its own. The Doric 
The sturdy shaft is grooved lengthwise with some column 
twenty flutings. The capital is a circular band of stone capped 
by a square block, all without decoration. The mainland of 
Greece was the especial home of the Doric order. This was 
also the characteristic style of southern Italy and Sicily. 

1 The so-called Corinthian order differs from the Ionic only in its capital. 


194 


Classical Civilization 


The Ionic column rests upon a base. Its shaft is tall and 
slender. The beautifully carved capital swells outward into 
The Ionic four spiral rolls, the ends of which are curled under 
column to f orm the “volutes.” The Ionic order flourished 

particularly in Asia Minor. It was well known, too, at Athens. 




Corner of a Doric Corner of an Ionic 

Facade Facade 


Orders of Greek Architecture 


The temple formed the chief structure in a Greek city. It 
was a rectangular building, provided with doors, but without 
Nature of the windows, and surrounded by a single or double row 
Greek temple G f columns. The architrave, a plain band of 
massive stones, reached from one column to another. Then 
came the frieze, adorned with sculptured reliefs, then the horizon-' 
tal cornice, and at the ends of the building the triangular 

































































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i95 


pediments formed by the sloping roof. The pediments were 
sometimes decorated with statues. Since the temple did 
not serve as a meeting place for worshipers, but only as a 
sanctuary for the deity, its interior usually had little ornamen¬ 
tation. 

Greek temples were seldom very large, for mere hugeness 
was not an object to the builders. They were not even lavishly 
decorated. Their beauty lies, most of all, in their Uniqueness 
harmonious proportions and perfect symmetry. In of the Greek 
the best examples of the Greek temple there are, temple 
for instance, no straight lines. The columns are not set at 
equal intervals, but closer 
together near the corners 
of the building. The shafts 
of the columns, instead of 
tapering upward at a uni¬ 
form rate, swell slightly 

toward the center. These 
, . . . Plan of the Parthenon, Athens 

characteristics make a 

. , . r The larger room (cella) measured exactly one hun- 

classical temple unique OI dred feet in length, 

its kind. 1 

There are very few remains of Greek sculpture. The statues 
of gold and ivory have long since vanished. The bronze statues, 
formerly numbered by thousands, have nearly g culpture 
all gone into the melting pot. Those of marble 
were turned into mortar or used as building materials. The 
statues which we still possess are mainly copies, made in Roman 
times from Greek originals. It is as if the paintings by the old 
masters of Europe, four centuries ago, were now known only in 
the reproductions by modern artists of inferior powers. 

Greek sculpture existed in the two forms of bas-reliefs and 
statuary in the round. Reliefs were chiefly used for temple 
pediments and friezes, and also for the many y ar i e ties of 
grave monuments. Statues consisted of the images Greek 
of the gods set up in their shrines, the sculptures sculpture 
dedicated as offerings to divinities, and the figures of statesmen, 

1 See the plates facing pages 106 and 116. 






























196 


Classical Civilization 


generals, and victorious athletes raised in public places and 
sanctuaries. 

This list will show how many were the opportunities which 
the sculptor enjoyed. The service of religion created a constant 
Importance demand for his genius. The numerous athletic 
of the sculp- contests and the daily sports of the gymnasium 
gave him a chance to study living models in the 
handsome, finely-shaped bodies of the contestants. It is not 





a. Corinthian b. Composite c. Tuscan 

Capitals 

The highly decorative Corinthian capital, modeled on acanthus leaves, came into fashion 
in Alexandrian and Roman times. The Composite capital, as its name indicates, combined 
details from the Ionic and Corinthian into one ornate whole. This and the plain Tuscan 
capital were quite generally employed by the Romans. 

. remarkable, therefore, that sculpture reached so high a develop¬ 
ment in ancient Greece. 1 

Greek painters enjoyed a high reputation in antiquity. 
Unfortunately, their easel pictures, which were done in water- 
Painting and color, have not survived. We possess some re- 
mmor arts markable miniatures, produced by grinding colors 
in heated liquid wax and applying them to wooden or 
ivory objects. We also possess many painted vases, usu¬ 
ally the production of ordinary craftsmen, but remarkable 
for artistic excellence. The same is true of their metal work, 
gems, and coins. The Greek feeling for beauty impressed 
itself upon everything which the hands of a Greek workman 
made. 


See the plates facing pages 102 and 103. 





























Roman Art 


197 


63. Roman Art 

The Romans achieved preeminence in architecture. The 
temples and other public works of Greece seem almost insig¬ 
nificant beside the stupendous edifices raised by The arch and 
Roman genius in every province of the empire. dome 
The ability of the Romans to build on so large a scale arose from 
their use of vaulted constructions. Knowledge of the round 
arch passed over from the Near East to the Etruscans and 



The Pantheon 


The original building was the work of Agrippa, a minister of Augustus. The temple was 
reconstructed by Hadrian, who left the Greek portico unchanged but added the rotunda and 
the dome. This great dome, the largest in the world, is made of solid concrete. During the 
Middle Ages the Pantheon was converted into a church. It is now the burial place of the 
kings of Italy. 

from them to the Romans (§§ 29 , 45 ). The arch was employed 
at first mainly for gates, drainage sewers, aqueducts, and bridges. 
It was used during the imperial age for the construction of vast 
domed buildings. The principle of the dome has inspired some 
of the finest creations of ancient and modern architecture. 

The Romans for many of their buildings made much use of 
concrete. Its chief ingredient was pozzolana, a sand Use of con _ 
found in great abundance near Rome and other crete and 
sites. When mixed with lime, it formed a very rubble 
strong cement. This material was poured in a fluid state 







198 


Classical Civilization 


Temples 



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into timber casings, where it quickly set and hardened. Small 
pieces of stone, called rubble, were also forced down into the 
cement to give it additional stability. Buildings of this sort were 
usually faced with brick, which in turn might be covered with 
thin slabs of marble, thus producing an attractive appearance. 

The triumphs of Roman architecture were not confined 
chiefly to sacred edifices. Roman temples, indeed, are mostly 
copies from the Greek. In comparison with their 
originals, they lack grace and refinement. There 
is less accuracy in the masonry fitting and far less careful atten¬ 
tion to details of construction. More characteristically Roman 

are vaulted temples, such 
as the Pantheon, where the 
circular dome is faced with 
a Greek portico. 

Roman basilicas, of which 
only the ruins are now in 
existence, were once found 
in every city. These were 
large, lofty buildings for the 
use of judges and mer- 
The chief feature of a basilica was the spacious cen¬ 
tral hall flanked by a single or double row of col¬ 
umns, forming aisles and supporting the flat roof. 
At one end of the hall was a semicircular recess — the apse — 
where the judges held court. This arrangement of the interior 
bears a close resemblance to the plan of the early Christian church 
with its nave, choir (or chancel), and columned aisles. The 
Christians, in fact, seem to have taken the familiar basilicas 
as the models for their places of worship. 

Perhaps the most imposing, and certainly among the most 
useful, of Roman structures were aqueducts. 1 There were 
sixty-eight in Italy and the provinces. No less 
than fourteen supplied the capital city with water. 
The aqueducts usually ran under the surface of the ground, as 


Plan of the Ulpian Basilica, Rome 

The hall measured 360 feet in length and 180 feet 
in width. 


chants. 


Basilicas 


Aqueducts 


1 See the illustration, page 155. 



Roman Art 


199 

do our water pipes. They were carried on arches only across 
depressions and valleys. 

The abundant water supply furnished by the aqueducts was 
connected with a system of great public baths, or therma. 
Scarcely a town or village throughout the empire 

** Thermae ^ 

lacked one or more such buildings. Those at 
Rome were constructed on a scale of magnificence of which we 
can form but a slight conception from the ruins now in exist¬ 
ence. In addition to many elaborate arrangements for the 



Arch of Constantine 

Erected at Rome in 315 a.d. It consists of a centra! gateway and two smaller arches 
flanked by detached columns in the Corinthian style. There are four large statues in front of 
the upper story and numerous sculptures in relief. 


bathers, the thermce included lounging and reading rooms, 
libraries, gymnasia, and even museums and galleries of art. 

A very characteristic example of Roman building is found in 
the triumphal arches. Their sides were adorned with bas-reliefs, 
which pictured the principal scenes of a successful Triumphal 
campaign. Memorial structures, called columns arches and 
of victory, were also set up in Rome and other cities. columns 
Both arch and column have been frequently imitated by modern 
architects. 










200 


Classical Civilization 


The palaces of Roman emperors and nobles, together with 
their luxurious country houses, or villas, have all disappeared. 
Circuses A like fete h as befallen the enormous circuses, such 
theaters, and as the Circus Maximus at Rome and the Hippo- 
amphitheaters ^rome at Constantinople. The Roman theaters 
that still survive reproduce, in most respects, the familiar 
outlines of the Greek structures. In the amphitheaters, where 
animal shows and gladiatorial combats were exhibited, we have 
a genuinely Roman invention. The gigantic edifice, called the 
Colosseum, in its way as truly typifies Roman architectural 
genius as the Parthenon represents at its best that of the Greeks. 

Roman sculpture owed much to Greek models. However, the 
portrait statues and bas-reliefs show originality and illustrate 
Roman the tendency of the Romans toward realism in art. 

sculpture The sculptor tried to represent an historic person 
as he really looked or an historic event, for example, a battle or 
a triumphal procession, as it actually happened. The portrait 
statues of Roman emperors and statesmen impress us at once 
with a sense of reality. 

Our knowledge of Roman painting is almost wholly confined 
to the wall paintings found at Rome, Herculaneum, and Pom- 
Roman peii. What has survived is apparently the work 

painting G f ordinary craftsmen, who, if not Greeks, were 

deeply affected by the Greek spirit. Most of the scenes they 
depict are taken from classical mythology. The coloring is 
very rich; and the peculiar shade of red used is known to-day by 
the name of “Pompeian red.” The practice of mural painting 
passed over from the Romans to European artists, who have 
employed it in the frescoes of medieval and modern churches. 


64 . The Legacy of Greece and Rome 

We have now gained some idea of the civilization built up by 
Graeco-Romans around the shores of the Mediterranean during 
“ Classical ” the thousand years between 500 b.c. and 500 a.d. 
civilization Their civilization is called “classical,” a word which 
comes to us from the Latin and still has a general reference to 
anything of the first rank or of supreme excellence. They 




ORIENTAL, GREEK, AND ROMAN COINS 

i. Lydian coin of about 700 b.c. ; the material is electrum, a compound of gold and sil¬ 
ver. 2. Gold daric, a Persian coin worth about $5. 3. Hebrew silver shekel. 4. Athenian 
silver tetradrachm, showing Athena, her olive branch, and sacred owl. 5. Roman bronze as 
(2 cents) of about 217 b.c.; the symbols are the head of Janus and the prow of a 
ship. 6. Bronze sestertius (5 cents), struck in Nero’s reign; the emperor, who carries a spear, 
is followed by a second horseman bearing a banner. 7. Silver denarius (20 cents), of about 
99 b.c-.; it shows a bust of Roma and three citizens voting. 8. Gold solidus ($5) of Honorius, 
about 400 a.d.; the emperor wears a diadem and carries a scepter. 







ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL GEMS 

i. Steatite, from Crete; two lions with forefeet on a pedestal; above a sun. 2. Sar¬ 
donyx from Elis; a goddess holding up a goat by the horns. 3. Rock crystal; a bearded 
Triton. 4. Carnelian; a youth playing a trigonon. 5. Chalcedony from Athens; a Bac¬ 
chante. 6. Sard; a woman reading a manuscript roll; before her a lyre. 7. Carnelian; 
Theseus. 8. Chalcedony; portrait head; Hellenistic Age. 9. Aquamarine; portrait of 
Julia, daughter of the emperor Titus. 10. Chalcedony; portrait head; Hellenistic Age. 
11. Carnelian; bust portrait of the Roman emperor Decius. 12. Beryl; portrait of Julia 
Domna, wife of the emperor Septimius Severus. 13. Sapphire; head of the Madonna. 
14. Carnelian; the judgment of Paris; Renaissance work. 15. Rock crystal; Madonna 
with Jesus and St. Joseph; probably Norman-Sicilian work. 














The Legacy of Greece and Rome 


201 


reached so high a cultural level that they could not fail to 
influence profoundly the less advanced and even barbarous 
peoples of Europe, who have grown into the leading nations of 
to-day. There was a transmission of classical civilization from 
its Mediterranean center to western Europe, just as, in earlier 
times, many civilizing elements passed from the Near East to 
the Greeks (§31). 

Our debt to the Greeks is above all an intellectual one, due to 
their preeminence in such fields as literature and art, science and 
philosophy. In Greece, it has been said, men The Greek 
first learned to be truly human; to develop the s enius 
body, to train the mind, to purify and refine the spirit. The 
Greeks were marked off from their predecessors in the Orient 
by a great love of speculation and discussion, by an eager 
curiosity which led them to search out the causes of things, 
by a wonderful feeling for the beautiful, and by a desire to live 
their lives in accordance with reason. No other people has sur¬ 
passed or even equaled them in these respects. 

The inheritance we have received from the Romans is rather 
of a practical sort, for they excelled as lawgivers and adminis¬ 
trators. One of their own poets recognized this fact The Roman 
and expressed it in famous lines: “Others, I s enius 
doubt not, shall beat out the breathing bronze with softer lines; 
shall from marble draw forth the features of life; shall plead 
their causes better; with the rod shall trace the paths of heaven 
and tell the rising of the stars: remember thou, O Roman, to 
rule the nations with thy sway — these shall be thine arts — to 
crown Peace with Law, to spare the humbled, and to tame in 
war the proud.” 1 

Studies 

1. Account for the origin of our words classical, politics, capital, pedagogue, 
music, grammar, symposium, circus, lyric, tragedy, comedy, orchestra, chorus, 
sophist, academy, lyceum, epicurean, and stoic. 2. Explain the following: 
capitolium; forum; toga; atrium; thermce; and spina. 3. What did 
civic patriotism mean to the Greek and to the Roman? 4. Give some 
account of Greek and Roman education. 5. Mention some differences 

1 Vergil, JEneid, vi, 847-853. 


202 


Classical Civilization 


between the ancient and the modern theater. 6. Distinguish between 
epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry. When and how did each poetical form 
arise among the Greeks? 7. What is the significance of the early Greek 
“philosophers” in the history of thought? 8. What is the “Socratic 
method” of teaching? 9. Trace on the map (page 190) the voyages of 
Hanno and Pytheas. 10. Show how Greek knowledge of the world had 
expanded between the time of Homer and that of Ptolemy (maps on pages 
100 and 190). 11. Why did the existence of slavery in antiquity dis¬ 

courage the invention of labor-saving machinery? 12. Discuss the appro¬ 
priateness of the terms: severe Doric; graceful Ionic, and ornate Corinthian. 
13. Can you find examples of any of the Greek architectural orders in 
public buildings familiar to you? 14. By reference to the illustrations 
(page 194), explain the following terms: shaft; capital; architrave; frieze; 
and cornice. 15. Look up in an encyclopedia or a dictionary of classical 
antiquities accounts of the Colossus of Rhodes, the Mausoleum at Hali¬ 
carnassus, and the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. 16. How do you 
account for the almost total loss of original Greek sculptures ? 17. Name 

five famous works of Greek sculpture which survive to-day only in Roman 
copies. 18. “The dome, with the round arch out of which it sprang, is the 
most fertile conception in the whole history of building.” Justify this 
statement. 19. With what famous examples of domed churches and 
public buildings are you familiar? 20. Discuss the revival of cement con¬ 
struction in recent times. What are its special advantages? 21. Men¬ 
tion some modern examples of triumphal arches and columns of victory. 



A Musical Contest 


Apollo with the lyre; the satyr 
Marsyas with the flute 












CHAPTER VIII 


THE TRANSITION FROM ANCIENT TIMES 1 
65 . The “ Fall ” of Rome 

The first two centuries of the Roman Empire, beginning 

with the reign of Augustus, formed an era of peace and material 

prosperity such as had never been known before 

, . 11 . „ End of the 

m the ancient world, at any rate m Europe. The Roman 
inhabitants of the empire, during these centuries, ^ np J re m the 
did not try to overthrow it or to withdraw from its 
protection. They believed that it would endure forever — 
“Eternal Rome.” But the empire was not eternal. It grew 
weaker, as time went on, and offered less and less resistance to 
the German barbarians encroaching on the northern frontiers. 
When in the year 476 the barbarians in Italy deposed Romulus 
Augustulus (“the little Augustus”), whose name, curiously 
enough, recalled that of the legendary founder of Rome and 
that of its first emperor, there was no longer any Roman emperor 
ruling in western Europe. Barbarian kingdoms had now been 
set up, not only in Italy, but also in North Africa, Spain, Gaul, 
and Britain. This outcome is often described as the “fall” of 
Rome. 

To speak of the “fall” of Rome suggests the idea of a violent 
catastrophe which suddenly plunged the empire into ruin. The 
truth is, rather, that the breakdown of the imperial „ . , , 

11 1-11 1 Survival of 

government was a gradual process, which lasted the Roman 

several hundred years. Rome was a long time ^ pire m the 

falling. Nor had all of the empire fallen by the end 

of the fifth century. The barbarians never made much impres- 

1 Webster, Readings in Early European History, chapter xxiii, “The Germans 
as Described by Tacitus.” 


203 


204 


The Transition from Ancient Times 


sion on that part of its territory lying in eastern Europe. Here 
the empire, with a capital at Constantinople, 1 survived for 
centuries and upheld the Roman tradition of law and order. 
It did not entirely disappear until the year 1453, when Constan¬ 
tinople was captured by the Ottoman Turks. 

Why could not this great Roman Empire keep the Germans 
at bay and prevent them from occupying western Europe? 
Political Many reasons have been given for its failure to do 
weakness of so. We may point out, first, that the empire 
the empire embraced too wide a territory for its efficient 
management. It was so big as to be unwieldy. Second, the 
empire contained too many diverse peoples for its real unification. 
There existed between them no unity of language, religion, and 
customs, which enables the inhabitants of a modern nation to 
work together for common ends. Third, the empire made no 
provision for local self-government. As time went on, nearly 
all power was concentrated in the hands of the emperor and 
his officials. He assessed the taxes, framed edicts having the 
force of laws, and acted as the supreme judge. The old Graeco- 
Roman ideal of democracy, which had meant so much for civi¬ 
lization, was destroyed by the imperial system. The inhabit¬ 
ants of the empire looked to their all-powerful ruler to protect 
them; when he failed to do so, they could not, or would not, 
protect themselves. The barbarians entered the empire to find 
a spiritless people, who seldom opposed, and indeed often wel¬ 
comed, their coming. 

There were still other reasons for the “fall” of Rome. The 
population of the empire seems to have much lessened, especially 
Economic during the third and fourth centuries, partly 
weakness of because of an increased death-rate, due to the 
the empire prevalence of malaria and plagues, but chiefly as 
the result of a decreased birth-rate. Men and women, finding 
it more and more difficult to make a living, did not marry; 
or, if they married, they had few children, perhaps none at all. 
The custom of infanticide was likewise very common, especially 

1 Founded in 328-330 by the emperor Constantine, on the site of the old Greek 
colony of Byzantium. 



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Preparation for Christianity 


205 


among the poorer classes. The empire suffered from want of 
men to serve as soldiers in the armies, as artisans in the work¬ 
shops, and as peasants on the farms. It is no wonder, therefore, 
that in province after province large tracts of land went out of 
cultivation, that the cities decayed, and that there was a general 
“slump” in commerce, manufacturing, and other forms of 
business enterprise. “Hard times ” settled on the Roman world. 
The empire also suffered from want of money. To meet the 
heavy cost of the luxurious court, to pay the salaries of the 
swarms of public officials, and to feed and amuse the idlers in the 
great cities involved a heavy expenditure. Taxes were harder to 
collect, now that both population and production has so seriously 
fallen off. The harshest measures were adopted to wring from 
the wretched subjects every penny that could possibly be paid. 
They came to dread the visits of the taxgatherers even more 
than the inroads of the barbarians. 

In studying history it is usually more profitable to dwell 
on the forces that make for progress rather than on those that 
make for decline. There were, indeed, two great Progressive 
progressive forces at work in ancient society, trans- forces 
forming it, improving it, and gradually building up a new and 
better civilization. They were the Christian Church and the 
German barbarians. 

66 . Preparation for Christianity 

Several centuries before the rise of Christianity some Greek 
thinkers began to feel dissatisfied with the crude faith that had 
come down to them from their forefathers. They Decline of 
could no longer believe in the Olympian deities, paganism 
who were fashioned like themselves and who possessed all the 
faults of mortal men and women (§36). Educated Romans 
also became skeptical about the gods, the myths, and the 
ceremonies of paganism. Even the worship of the emperors, 
which spread throughout the Roman world and helped to hold 
it together, failed to satisfy the spiritual wants of mankind. 
It made no appeal to the moral nature; it brought no message, 
either of fear or hope, about a future life. 


2 o 6 The Transition from Ancient Times 


The system of Greek philosophy, called Stoicism (§ 60), 
gained many adherents among the Romans. Any one who will 
Sto'cism rea< ^ Stoic wr itings, such as those of the noble 
emperor Marcus Aurelius, will find in them some 
resemblances to Christian teachings. Stoicism urged men to 
forgive injuries — to “bear and forbear.” It emphasized 


A Roman Altar 

Uffizi Gallery, Florence 

An altar dedicated in 2 b.c. to the lares (household gods) of Augustus. The emperor is in 
the center, Livia his wife to the right, and one of his adopted sons to the left. 



human brotherhood. It expressed a humble and unfaltering 
reliance on a divine Providence. Stoic philosophy, however, 
influenced chiefly the educated classes; it could not become a 
religion for all sorts and conditions of men. 

Many Greeks found a partial satisfaction of their religious 
longings in secret rites known as “mysteries.” The most 




Preparation for Christianity 


207 


important of these grew up at Eleusis, 1 a little Attic town 
thirteen miles from Athens. They were connected with the 
worship of Demeter, goddess of vegetation and of The Eleusin- 
the life of nature. The celebration of the Eleusinian ian mysteries 
mysteries came in September and lasted nine days. When the 
candidates for admission to the secret rites were worked up 
to a state of religious excitement, they entered a brilliantly 
lighted hall and witnessed a passion play dealing with the 
legend of Demeter. They seem to have received no direct moral 
instruction but saw, instead, living pictures and pantomimes 
which represented the future life and held out to them the 
promise of a blessed lot in another world. As an Athenian 
orator said, “Those who have shared this initiation pos¬ 
sess sweeter hopes about death and about the whole of 
life.” 2 

The Eleusinian mysteries, though unknown in Homeric times, 
were already popular before the epoch of the Persian wars. 
They became a Panhellenic festival open to all influence of 
Greeks, women as well as men, slaves as well as the mysteries 
freemen. The privilege of membership was later extended to 
Romans. During the first centuries of our era the influence 
of the mysteries increased, as faith in the Olympian religion 
declined. They formed one of the last strongholds of pagan¬ 
ism and survived until the close of the fourth century of our 
era. 

The Asiatic conquests of Alexander, followed in later cen¬ 
turies by the extension of Roman rule over the eastern coasts of 

the Mediterranean, brought the classical peoples ^ 

. , ° . . .... 7 Oriental reli- 

mto contact with new religions which had arisen gkmsinthe 

in the Near East. Slaves, soldiers, traders, and Roman 

Empire 

travelers carried them to the West, where they 
speedily won many followers. Even before the downfall of 
the republic the deities of Asia Minor, Egypt, and Persia had 
found a home at Rome. Under the empire many men and 
women were attracted to their worship. 

1 See the map on page 115. 

2 Isocrates, Panegyricus , 29 


208 


The Transition from Ancient Times 


The worship of the Egyptian goddess Isis first spread from 
Alexandria throughout the Greek world before it entered Italy. 

Isis represented the universal Mother Nature. As 
Isis 1 

such, she especially attracted women. But men 
also crowded her temples, where every day, at morning and 
evening, white-robed priests recited prayers, burnt sacred in¬ 
cense, and offered the image of the goddess for adoration. 
Such solemn ceremonies, with their pomp and music, captivated 
the imagination. Votaries of the “Queen of Peace” were 
found all over the Roman world. 



Priests and Priestesses of Isis 


Perhaps the most remarkable of the Oriental religions was 

Mithraism. Mithra first appears as a Persian sun god, the 

leader of Ahura Mazda’s hosts in the ceaseless 
Mithra . ... . 

struggle against the forces of darkness and evil 

(§27). As a god of light Mithra was also a god of truth and 
purity. His worship, spreading over the Roman Empire, 
became the noblest of all pagan faiths. It took the form of 
a mystery with seven grades, or degrees, through which can¬ 
didates passed by ordeals of initiation. Men saw in Mithra 
a Lord and Giver of Life, who protected the weak and misera¬ 
ble, cleansed the sinner, conquered death, and procured for 
his followers the crown of immortality. 

The new Oriental religions all appealed to the emotions 




209 


Rise and Spread of Christianity 

as the ancient paganism has never done. They provided a 

beautiful, inspiring ritual, and they held out to c . 

, . £ .. Significance 

their followers the hope of a blessed existence of the Orien- 

beyond the grave. It is not strange, therefore, tal religions 
that they penetrated every Roman province, only disappearing 
with the triumph of Christianity. 

67. Rise and Spread of Christianity 

Christianity rose among the Jews, for Jesus 1 was a Jew and 
his disciples were Jews. After the crucifixion Peter and the 
other apostles remained for several years at Christianity 
Jerusalem, preaching and making converts. The among the 
followers of Jesus met so much opposition on the ^ ews 
part of Jewish leaders in the capital that they finally withdrew 
to Samaria, Damascus, and Antioch, where they labored zeal¬ 
ously among the large Jewish communities in these cities. 

A new convert, Saul of Tarsus, afterward the Apostle Paul, 
did most to admit the Gentiles, or pagans, to the privileges 
of the new religion. Though born a Jew, Paul had Missionary 
been trained in the schools of Tarsus, a city of labors of 
Asia Minor which was a great center of Greek Paul 
learning. He possessed a knowledge of Greek philosophy, 
and particularly of Stoicism. This broad education helped 
to make him an acceptable missionary to Greek-speaking 
peoples. During more than thirty years of unceasing activity 
Paul established churches in Asia Minor, Greece, Macedonia, 
and Italy. To many of these churches he wrote the letters 
(epistles) which have found a place in the New Testament. 
Paul was an acute thinker, as well as a man of deep spiritual 
insight, and the doctrines found in his writings have exercised 
a very great influence on the development of Christian theology. 

Christianity spread rapidly over the Roman world. At the 
close of the first century there were Christians throughout 
Asia Minor. The second century saw the establishment of 
flourishing churches in almost every province of the empire. 

1 Bom probably in 4 b.c., during the reign of Augustus; crucified during the reign 
of Tiberius, when Pontius Pilatus was the Roman governor of Judaea. 



210 











































































Rise and Spread of Christianity 211 


Conditions 
favoring the 
spread of 
Christianity 

East and 


A hundred years later there were missionaries along the Rhine, 

on the Danube frontier, and in distant Britain. . .. . 
u 7 Christianity 

We are but of yesterday,” says a Christian among the 

writer, with pardonable exaggeration, “yet we Gentlles 
have filled all your places of resort — cities, islands, fortresses, 
towns, markets, the camp 
itself, the tribes, town 
councils, the palace, the 
senate, and the forum. 

We have left to you only 
the temples of your gods.” 1 

Certain circumstances 
contributed to the success 
of this gigantic 
missionary en¬ 
terprise. Al¬ 
exander’s con¬ 
quests in the 
those of Rome in the West 
had done much to remove 
the barriers to intercourse 
between peoples. The use 
of Greek and Latin as the 
common languages of the 
Mediterranean world fur¬ 
nished a medium in which 
Christian speakers and writ¬ 
ers could be easily under¬ 
stood. The early mission¬ 
aries, such as Paul himself, 
were often Roman citizens 

who enjoyed the protection of the Roman law and profited by the 
ease of travel which the imperial rule had made possible. More¬ 
over, the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70 
and the subsequent exile of the Jews from Palestine spread the 
Chosen People throughout the Roman Empire, where they 

1 Tertullian, Apology, 37. 



Burial Niches in the Catacombs 

The catacombs of Rome are underground ceme¬ 
teries in which the Christians buried their dead. 
Several tiers of galleries (in one instance as many 
as seven) lie one below the other. Their total length 
has been estimated at no less than six hundred 
miles. The illustration shows loculi, or rectangu¬ 
lar niches, one above the other, in which bodies 
were laid. The opening at the front was closed 
with slabs of marble or tiles, on which inscriptions 
were engraved. 





















212 


The Transition from Ancient Times 


familiarized the pagans with Jewish ideals of monotheism and 
moral purity and with Jewish hopes for a Messiah, thus pre¬ 
paring the way for Christianity. At no other period in ancient 
history were conditions so favorable for the rapid spread of a 
new religion. 

While Christianity was conquering the world, the believers 

in its doctrines were group- 
Christian ing themselves 

churches into communi¬ 

ties or churches. Each city 
had a congregation of Chris¬ 
tian worshipers. They met, 
not in synagogues as did the 
Jews, but in private houses, 
where they sang hymns, 
listened to readings from 
the Holy Scriptures, and 
partook of a sacrificial meal 
in memory of the last sup¬ 
per of Jesus with his dis¬ 
ciples. Certain officers 
called presbyters, or elders, 
were chosen to conduct the 
services and instruct the 
converts. The chief pres¬ 
byter received the name 
of ‘‘overseer,” or bishop. 
Each church had also one 
or more deacons, who visited 
the sick and relieved the 
wants of the poor. Every Christian community thus formed 
a little brotherhood of earnest men and women, united by com¬ 
mon beliefs and common hopes. 

68. Triumph of Christianity 

The imperial government, which had treated other foreign 
faiths with careless indifference, or even with favor, which had 



Christian Tombstone prom Spain 


A fourth-century monument on which appear the 
Greek letters X P (CHR), making a monogram of 
the word Christ (Greek Christos). Alpha (a) and 
omega (to), the first and last letters of the Greek 
alphabet, are also shown, in allusion to Revelation, 
i, 8, n ; xxi, 6; xxii, 13. 





































































. 





' 

■ 







.. 

































Triumph of Christianity 


213 



tolerated the Jews and granted to them special privileges of 
worship, made a deliberate effort to crush Christianity. The 
reason was that it seemed to threaten the existence The perse- 
of the state. Converts to the new religion con- cutions 
demned the official paganism as idolatrous and they refused 
to swear by pagan gods in courts of law. Nor would they 
worship the genius (guardian spirit) of the emperor or burn 
incense before his statue, which stood in every town. To do so 
would have been an acknowledgment of the divinity of the 
emperor — something impossible for Christians. Naturally, 
they were outlawed and from time to 
time were subjected to persecutions in 
various parts of the Roman world. 

The last persecution, early in the fourth 
century, was the most severe. It con¬ 
tinued for eight years, but it failed to 
shake the constancy of the Christians. 

They welcomed the torture and death 
which would gain for them a heavenly 
crown. Those who perished were called 
“martyrs,” that is, “witnesses” to 
Christ. 

The government at length realized 
the uselessness of the per- “ Edict of 
secutions, and in 313 the Milan,” 313 
emperor Constantine and his colleague, Licinius, issued the so- 
called “Edict of Milan,” which proclaimed for the first time in 
history the noble principle of religious toleration. It gave 
absolute freedom to every man to choose and follow the religion 
which he deemed best suited to his needs. This edict placed 
the Christian faith on an equality with paganism. 

Constantine himself accepted Christianity and favored its 
followers throughout his reign. He surrounded himself with 
Christian bishops, freed the clergy from taxation, Constantine 
and spent large sums in building churches. One and the Chris- 
of his laws abolished the use of the cross as an tians 
instrument of punishment. Another enactment required that 


Coin of Constantine 

Shows the sacred military stand¬ 
ard (labarum), which was adopted 
by Constantine and carried by later 
Christian Roman emperors. It 
consisted of a staff or lance with 
a purple banner on a crossbar 
surmounted by the monogram of 
Christ. 


214 


The Transition from Ancient Times 


magistrates, city people, and artisans were to rest on Sun¬ 
day. 1 This was the beginning of a long series of “ Sunday 
laws ” from the fourth century to the present time. 

Significant of the emperor’s attitude toward Christianity 
was his action in summoning all the bishops in the different 
Church Coun- P rov i nces to a gathering at Nicaea in Asia Minor, 
cil at Nicaea, This was the first general council of the Church. 

The principal work of the Council of Nicaea was 
the settlement of a great dispute which had arisen over the 
nature of Christ. Some theologians, headed by Arius, a priest 
of Alexandria, maintained that Christ the Son, having been 
created by God the Father, was necessarily inferior to him. 
Other theologians opposed this view and held that Christ was 
not a created being, but was in all ways equal to God. The 
Council condemned Arius as a heretic and framed the Creed of 
Nicaea, which, as modified by later councils, is still the accepted 
summary of Christian doctrine. Though thrust out of the 
Church, Arianism lived to flourish anew among the German 
barbarians, the majority of whom were converted to Christianity 
by Arian missionaries. 

The recognition given to Christianity by Constantine helped 
immensely to spread the new faith. The emperor Theodosius, 
Christianity whose services to the Church won him the title of 
becomes the “the Great,” made Christianity the state religion, 
state religion g acr j£ ces t 0 th e pagan gods were forbidden, the 
temples were closed, and their property was taken away. Those 
strongholds of the old paganism, the Delphic oracle, the Olym¬ 
pian games, and the Eleusinian mysteries were abolished. The 
household worship of ancestors (§47) was also prohibited. 
The old beliefs and ceremonies survived for a long time after 
their prohibition, especially in country districts, but paganism 
as a recognized religion disappeared by the end of the fourth 
century. 

1 It is not certain, however, that this legislation had any reference to Christianity. 
Constantine may have been only adding the day of the Sun, the worship of which 
was then firmly established in the empire, to the other holy days of the Roman 
calendar. 


Christian Influence on Society 


215 


69. Christian Influence on Society 

The old pagan faiths made few moral demands upon their 
followers. A man who was pious and reverent toward the gods 
might be very immoral, indeed, in his relations Moral teach- 
with his fellow men. Christianity, which taught ings of Chris- 
men to love God, taught them also to love their tiamty 
neighbors. It condemned the very common practice of suicide, 
as well as the frightful evil of infanticide. It set its face 
against all forms of cruelty, such as the gladiatorial combats, 
in which slaves, captives, and criminals were compelled to fight 
with one another and kill one another for the amusement of the 
spectators. It denounced, unsparingly, the luxury and vice of 
the great cities. In general, Christianity did much to soften 
and refine manners by the stress which it laid upon the “Chris¬ 
tian” virtues of humility, tenderness, and mercy. 

The Christian belief in the fatherhood of God implied a cor¬ 
responding belief in the brotherhood of man. This doctrine of 
human equality had been expressed many times Social teach . 
by ancient philosophers, but Christianity trans- ings of 
lated their precepts into practice. It sought to Chnstiaiuty 
improve the condition of the slave by requiring his master to 
treat him as a brother, and it opened the offices and dignities of 
the Church to both alike. It declared that free and unfree were 
equal in God’s sight, and by encouraging emancipation it even 
helped to decrease slavery. Christianity, whose founder had 
worked as a carpenter, naturally emphasized the dignity of 
manual toil. For Christians idleness, not work, was the real 
disgrace: “to labour is to pray” became a Christian motto. 
The new religion laid much stress on benevolence as a duty and 
therefore supported all institutions to relieve the poor, the sick, 
and the downtrodden. It also elevated the position of women, 
by making marriage a religious sacrament, instead of a mere 
civil contract, by opposing divorce, and by insisting upon 
purity of life for both men and women. Christianity, we see, 
was not simply a set of beliefs, or a system of church organiza¬ 
tion, or a beautiful and impressive ritual of worship. The 


216 The Transition from Ancient Times 

new religion, from the start, became a mighty influence for 
the betterment of mankind. 


Physical 
features of 
Germany 

population. 


70. The Germans 

The region called Germany ( Germania ) in antiquity reached 
from the Rhine eastward as far as the Vistula and from the 
Danube northward to the Black Sea. It con¬ 
sisted of dense forests, extensive marshes, and 
sandy plains, incapable of supporting a large 
Clouds and mists enveloped much of the country 

in summer, and 
in winter it lay 
buried under 
snow and ice. 
Such unfavor¬ 
able conditions 
retarded the de¬ 
velopment of 
Germany, which 
was also shut 
out from the 



Horn of Ulphus (Wulf) in the cathedral of York. The old Eng¬ 
lish were heavy drinkers, chiefly of ale and mead. The evening 
meal usually ended with a drinking bout. 


Mediterranean basin by mountain barriers. 

The Germans were an Indo-European people, speaking a 
Teutonic language related, on the one hand, to Greek and Latin 
Inhabitants and, on the other hand, to the Celtic, Lettic, and 
of Germany Slavic tongues. 1 Our earliest notice of them is 
found in the Commentaries by Julius Caesar, who twice invaded 
their country. About a century and a half later a Roman 
historian, Tacitus, wrote a little book called Germany , which 
gives an account of the people as they were before coming under 
the influence of Rome and Christianity. Tacitus speaks of 
their giant size, their fierce, blue eyes, and their blonde or ruddy 
hair. These physical traits made them seem especially terrible 
to the smaller and darker Romans. He mentions their love 
of warfare, the fury of their onset in battle, and the contempt 
which they had for wounds and even death itself. When not 

1 See the table on page 21. 



The Germans 


217 


fighting, they passed much of their time in the chase, and still 
more time in sleep and gluttonous feasts. They were hard 
drinkers, too, and so passionately fond of gambling that, when a 
man’s wealth was gone, he would even stake his liberty on a 
single game. Tacitus also dwells on certain attractive qualities 
possessed by these northern barbarians. They were hospitable 
to the stranger, they respected their sworn word, and they loved 
liberty and hated restraint. Their chiefs, we are told, ruled 
rather by persuasion than by authority. Above all, the Ger- 



Romans Destroying a German Village 

Relief on the column of Marcus Aurelius, Rome. 


mans had a pure family life. “ Almost alone among barbarians,” 
writes Tacitus, “they are content with one wife. No one in 
Germany laughs at vice, nor is it the fashion to corrupt and be 
corrupted. Good habits are here more effectual than good laws 
elsewhere.” 1 The Germans, then, were strong and brave, 
hardy, chaste, and free. 

The Germans, during the three centuries between the time of 
Tacitus and the beginning of the invasions, had ad- Progress of 
vanced somewhat in civilization. They were learn- the Germans 
ing to live in towns instead of in rude villages, to read and write, 

1 Tacitus, Germania, 19. 
















2l8 


The Transition from Ancient Times 


to make better weapons and clothes, to use money, and to enjoy 
foreign luxuries, such as wine, spices, and ornaments. They 
were likewise uniting in great confederations of tribes, ruled 
by kings who were able to lead them in migrations to other lands. 

The Roman Empire had long contained many Germans. 
Some were mercenaries in the imperial army. Augustus began 
The Germans P ract ice of hiring them as soldiers, and by the 
and the time of Constantine they formed the majority of 

the troops. The emperors also admitted friendly 
tribes of Germans within the frontiers to fill up the gaps in 
population and to farm the waste lands. Still other Germans 
entered the empire as slaves. The result was a very consider¬ 
able “barbarization” of the Roman world before the period 
of the invasions. 

71. The German Invasions and Their Results 

The love of fighting for its own sake, the desire for adventure, 
and the lust for booty explain, in part, the German invasions 
Causes of — but only in part. They were principally due to 
the invasions i an d hunger. When the soil of Germany, as people 
then understood how to use it, could no longer sustain increasing 
numbers, the inhabitants had the alternative of migration or 
starvation. It was the same grim alternative that has con¬ 
fronted man at every stage of savagery, barbarism, and civil¬ 
ization. The Germans chose to migrate, even though that 
meant war, and so from the time of Marius and Julius Caesar 
not a century passed without witnessing some dangerous move¬ 
ment by them against the frontiers of the Roman Empire. 

The invasions were of two types. Sometimes entire peoples 
migrated, as was the case with the Visigoths (West Goths), 
Character of Ostrogoths (East Goths), Vandals, Burgundians, 
the invasions an( j Lombards. They all settled among a much 
more numerous subject population, which in time absorbed 
them. None of their kingdoms proved to be enduring. Some¬ 
times, again, bands of warriors, led by military chiefs, set out 
from their home land and conquered possessions at the expense 













































































































































. 

: 













. 

■ 

. 

V' 




■ 




































. 

* 



































































The German Invasions and Their Results 219 


of the provincials. Such was especially the case with the 
Franks in the northern part of Gaul and the Anglo-Saxons in 
Britain. The Frankish and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were the 
only ones which developed into lasting states during the Middle 
Ages. 

Classical civilization suffered a great shock when the Germans 
descended on the Roman Empire. These barbarians were rude 
in manners, were very ignorant, and had little consequences 
taste for anything except warfare and bodily of the 
enjoyments. They were unlike the provincials in mvasions 
dress and habits of life. They lived under different laws, 
spoke different languages, and obeyed different rulers. They 


Roman Frontier Defense 

A reconstruction of the limes, a line of forts and wooden watch-towers, linked by a rampart 
of earth, which protected the northern boundary of the Roman Empire between the upper 
Rhine and upper Danube. 



sometimes destroyed Roman cities and killed or enslaved the 
inhabitants. Even when they settled peaceably within the 
empire, they allowed aqueducts, bridges, and roads to go with¬ 
out repairs, and theaters, baths, and public buildings to sink 
into ruins. Being devoted chiefly to agriculture, they per¬ 
mitted both industry and commerce to languish. Lacking 
any appreciation of education, they failed to keep up schools, 
universities, and libraries. Classical civilization had been 
declining before the Germans came. The invasions hastened 
the decline, with the result that large parts of western Europe 
went back for several centuries into semi-barbarism. 







220 


The Transition from Ancient Times 


Nevertheless, the Germans had the capacity to learn, and 
the willingness to learn, from those whom they had conquered. 
Fusion of Their fusion with the Romans was helped by 

Germans the previous settlement within the empire of so 

and Romans man y German soldiers, colonists, and slaves. It 
was very greatly helped by the fact that some of the principal 
peoples, including the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Bur¬ 
gundians, and Lombards, were already Christians at the time 
of their invasions, while other peoples, including the Franks and 
Anglo-Saxons, afterward adopted Christianity. Finally, as 
observed above, the Germans invaded the empire to seek homes 
for themselves, rather than simply to pillage and destroy. They 
accepted what they understood of Graeco-Roman culture and 
then imparted to the enfeebled provincials their fresh blood, 
youthful minds, and vigorous, progressive life. The fusion of 
Germans and Romans formed the great work of the early Middle 
Ages in western Europe. 


Studies 

i. Trace on the map (facing page 204) the political situation in Europe 
at the deposition of Romulus Augustulus. 2. In what sense does the date 
476 mark the “fall” of the Roman Empire? 3. Define the term absolut¬ 
ism as applied to the government of the later Roman Empire. 4. Look 
up in a dictionary the origin of the words epistle, theology, monotheism, 
priest, bishop, martyr, and paganism. 5. When and where was Jesus 
born ? Who was king of Judaea at the time ? Were the Jews independent 
of Rome during the lifetime of Jesus? 6. To what cities in Asia Minor 
did Paul write his Epistles? To what other cities of the Roman Empire? 

7. Summarize the New Testament narrative {Acts, xxvii-xxviii) of Paul’s 
journey to Rome, and indicate on the map the route which he followed. 

8. “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” Explain this 

statement. 9. What reasons may be given for the conversion of the 
Roman world to Christianity? 10. What is the date of the “Edict of 
Milan”? Of the Council of Nicaea ? n. Trace on the map (facing page 212) 
the extent of Christianity by the end of the fourth century. 12. Why had 
the Germans progressed more slowly than the Graeco-Romans ? 13. “The 

Germans had stolen their way into the very citadel of the empire long 
before its distant outworks were stormed.” Comment on this statement. 
14. Why is modern civilization, unlike that of classical antiquity, in little 


The German Invasions and Their Results 221 


danger from barbarians? 15. Set forth the conditions which favored, 
and those which hindered, the fusion of Germans and Romans. 16. “The 
Roman Empire is the lake into which all the streams of ancient history 
lose themselves and which all the streams of modern history flow out of.” 
Justify this statement. 


ftM^fco^lh^iiasa^oMDSTr&w©. 



Baucis iWv»s* 

wwlhftN^BMlKs^anrMM^Tpfiiftia^ 


SY@^Ihl ( B^51 < tOSTo M&UGW<iO 
.. '.IT 




A Page of the Gothic Gospels (Reduced) 

A manuscript of Ulfilas’s translation of the Bible 
forms one of the treasures of the library of the univer¬ 
sity of Upsala, Sweden. It is beautifully written in 
letters of gold and silver on parchment of a rich purple 
dye. In making his version Ulfilas, who was himself 
a converted Visigoth, generally indicated the Gothic 
sounds by means of the Greek alphabet. He added, 
however, a few signs from the Runic alphabet, with 
which the Germans were familiar. 






CHAPTER IX 


THE MIDDLE AGES 1 
72. The Holy Roman Empire 

The period called the Middle Ages is not well defined either 
as to its beginning or its close. For an initial date we have 
Limits of selected the year 476, when the Roman provinces 
the Middle in western Europe were almost wholly occupied by 
Ages the Germans. For concluding dates historians 

have taken those of the invention of printing (about 1450), the 
capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks (1453), the 
discovery of America (1492), the opening of a new sea-route 
to the East Indies (1498), and the commencement of the Prot¬ 
estant Reformation (1517). Such significant events in the 
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries seem to mark the end of 
medieval times, or, from another point of view, the beginning of 
modern times. No precise dates, indeed, separate one historic 
epoch from another. The truth is that the social fife of man 
forms a continuous growth, and man’s history, an uninterrupted 
stream. 

During the fifth century, while the Visigoths were finding a 
home in southern Gaul and Spain, the Ostrogoths in Italy, the 
The Franks Burgundians in the Rhone Valley, and the Vandals 
under Clovis [ n North Africa, still another German people began 
to spread over northern Gaul. They were the Franks, who had 

1 Webster, Readings in Early European History , chapter xxiv, “Stories of the 
Lombard Kings”; chapter xxv, “Charlemagne”; chapter xxix, “The Teachings 
of Mohammed”; chapter xxx, “The Saga of a Viking” ; chapter xxxi, “Alfred the 
Great”; chapter xxxii, “William the Conqueror and the Normans in England”; 
chapter xxxv, “Richard the Lion-hearted and the Third Crusade”; chapter xxxvi, 
“The Fourth Crusade and the Capture of Constantinople”; chapter xxxvii, “St. 
Louis”; chapter xxxviii, “Episodes of the Hundred Years’ War”; chapter xxxix, 
“Memoirs of a French Courtier.” 


222 


The Holy Roman Empire 


223 


long held lands on both sides of the lower Rhine. Their leader, 
Clovis, conquered the kingdom of Syagrius, 1 the only fragment 
of the Roman Empire remaining in Gaul, and then proceeded 
to annex the territories of his German neighbors. He built up 
in this way a great Frankish state. 

The Franks were still heathen when they entered upon their 
career of conquest. Clovis, however, had married a Burgundian 
princess, Clotilda, who was a devout Roman christianiza- 
Catholic and an ardent advocate of Christianity, tion of the 
The story is told how, when Clovis was hard pressed Franks ’ 496 
by his foes in a battle near Strasbourg, he vowed that if Clotilda’s 
God gave him victory he would become a Christian. The 
Franks won, and Clovis, faithful to his vow, had himself and 
three thousand warriors baptized into the Roman Catholic 
faith. By this act the king secured the loyalty of his Christian 
subjects in Gaul and won the favor of the Roman Church. The 
friendship between the popes and the Frankish rulers afterward 
ripened into a close alliance. 

The power which Clovis founded stood the test of time. For 
more than two hundred and fifty years the successors of Clovis 
were the strongest rulers in western Europe. The Franks 
During the eighth century they helped to keep after Clovis 
Europe Christian by beating back the Moslem Arabs, who, 
having seized Spain from the Visigoths, invaded Gaul and 
threatened to make that country also a Moslem land. It was a 
Frankish king who created a Christian and German empire to 
replace in western Europe the empire of Rome. This king was 
Charles the Great, or Charlemagne. 2 

Charlemagne reigned for nearly half a century (768-814), and 
during this time he set his stamp on all later European history. 
His character and personality are familiar to us Charlemagne, 
from a brief biography, written by his secretary, the man 
Einhard. Charlemagne, we learn, was a tall, square-shouldered, 
strongly built man, with bright, keen eyes, and an expression 
at once cheerful and dignified. Riding, hunting, and swimming 

1 See the map facing page 204. 

2 The French form of his name, from the Latin Carolus Magnus. 


224 


The Middle Ages 


were his favorite sports. He was simple in his tastes and very 
temperate in both food and drink. Except when in Rome, he 
wore the old Frankish costume, with high-laced boots, linen 
tunic, blue cloak, and sword girt at his side. He was a clear, 
fluent speaker, used Latin as readily as his native tongue, and 
understood Greek when it was spoken. “He also tried to learn 
to write and often kept his tablets and writing book under the 

pillow of his couch, that, when 
he had leisure, he might prac¬ 
tice his hand in forming letters; 
but he made little progress in 
this task, too long deferred and 
begun too late in life.” 1 For 
the times, however, Charle¬ 
magne was a well-educated man 
— by no means a barbarian. 

Much of Charlemagne’s reign 
was filled with warfare. He 
conquered the Lombards, who 
had taken Italy 
from the Ostro¬ 
goths. He in¬ 
vaded Spain and wrested from 
the Moslems a considerable dis¬ 
trict south of the Pyrenees. 
His long struggle with the Sax¬ 
ons and various Slavic peoples 
further widened the Frankish 
dominions. Charlemagne at 
the height of his power ruled over what is now France, Bel¬ 
gium, Holland, Switzerland, Austria, western Germany, north¬ 
ern Italy, and northern Spain, besides a part of Czechoslo¬ 
vakia and Jugoslavia. In this truly gigantic realm all the 
surviving Teutonic peoples, except those in Denmark, Norway, 
Sweden, and Britain, were brought under the sway of one 
man. 



Charlemagne 

Later an Museum, Rome 

A mosaic picture made during the lifetime 
of Charlemagne, and probably a fair likeness 
of him. 


1 Einhard, Vila Caroli Magni, 25. 





















/ 



































































225 


The Holy Roman Empire 

Charlemagne, the foremost ruler in Europe, seemed to the men 
of his time the rightful successor of the Roman emperors. He 
had their power, and now he was to have their ™ 0 

x I he emperor 

name. On Christmas Day, 800, the pope, in old Charie¬ 
st. Peter’s Church at Rome, placed on his head a magne > 800 
golden crown, while all the people cried out with 
one voice, “Long life and victory to Charles Augustus, the 
great and pacific emperor of the Romans, crowned by God!” 

The coronation of Charlemagne was regarded by his con¬ 
temporaries as the restoration or renewal of the Roman Empire, 
more than three hundred _ _. 

I he empire 

years after the deposition of of Charie- 
Romulus Augustulus (§ 65). magne 
Charlemagne’s empire, however, did not 
include North Africa, Britain, or much of 
Spain, or the Roman dominions in eastern 
Europe. It did include, on the other hand, 
extensive territories east of the Rhine and 
north of the Danube which the Romans 
had never been able to conquer. Further- Ring Seal or ° TT0 
more, the German Charlemagne and his ™ E REAT 

. The inscription reads 

German successors on the imperial throne oddo Rex. 

had little in common with the old Roman 
emperors, who spoke Latin, administered Roman law, and 
regarded the Germans as their most dangerous foes. Charle¬ 
magne’s empire was, indeed, largely a new creation, the result 
of an alliance between the kingdom of the Franks and the 
Roman Church. 

The imperial idea was revived, about one hundred and fifty 
years after Charlemagne’s death, by an able German ruler, 
Otto I, often called Otto the Great. Otto led his The emperor 
armies across the Alps, went, to Rome, and had the otto the 
pope crown him as Roman emperor. Otto’s Great ’ 962 
dominions were considerably smaller than Charlemagne’s, 
since they included only Germany and North Italy. Never¬ 
theless, Otto and the emperors who followed him asserted vast 
claims to sovereignty in Europe, as the heirs of Charlemagne 



226 


The Middle Ages 


and, through him, of Constantine and Augustus. The new 
empire came afterward to be called the Holy Roman Empire, 
the word Holy in its title expressing its intimate connection with 
the Papacy. It lived on in some measure for more than eight 
hundred years and did not quite disappear from European 

politics until the opening of the 
nineteenth century. 

The successors of Otto the Great 
constantly interfered in the affairs 
of Italy, in order to 



Germany .. 

and Italy in secure the Italian crown 

the Middle and the imperial title. 

treated that 


Ages 


The Iron Crown of 
Lombardy 

A fillet of iron, which, according to 
pious legend, had been beaten out of 
one of the nails of the True Cross. It 
came to the Lombards as a gift from 
Pope Gregory I, as a reward for their 
conversion to Roman Catholicism. 
During the Middle Ages it was used to 


They 

country as a conquered province 
which had no right to a na¬ 
tional life and an independent 
government under its own rulers. 
At the same time, they neglected 
their German possessions and failed 
to keep their powerful territorial 

crown the German emperors kings of lords in Subjection. Neither Italy 
Italy. This precious relic is now kept . ■, 

in a church at Monza in northern Italy, nor Germany, in consequence, be¬ 
came a united state, such as was 
formed in England, France, Spain, and other countries during 
the later Middle Ages. 

73. Northmen and Normans 

Our study of western Europe during the early Middle Ages 
has so far been confined to the Germans. We have left out of 
Renewed sight another group of Teutonic peoples, who 
Teutonic in- lived, as their descendants still live, in Denmark, 
Sweden, and Norway. They were the Northmen. 1 
The same land hunger which drove the German tribes southward 
made them quit their bleak, sterile country and seek new homes 
across the water. Their invasions, beginning about the time of 
Charlemagne, may be regarded as the last wave of that great 

1 Also called Vikings, or “ inlet men,” from the Norse vik, a bay or fiord. 








227 


60 ° Longitude West 40 ° from Greenwich 20 ° 0 ° Longitude East 20 

Discoveries and Settlements of the Northmen 













































228 


The Middle Ages 


Teutonic movement which had previously inundated western 
Europe and overwhelmed the Roman Empire. 

The Northmen were barbarous and heathen, untouched either 
by Graeco-Roman civilization or by the Christian religion. They 
started out as raiders and fell on the coasts of 
western Europe. They also found it easy to 
ascend the rivers in their shallow boats and reach 
places far inland. Their attacks did so much 
damage and inspired such great terror that a special prayer was 


Raids and 
settlements 
of the 
Northmen 



A Viking Ship 


A Viking chieftain, after his days of sea-roving had ended, was sometimes buried in his 
ship, over which a grave chamber, covered with earth, would be erected. Several such burial 
ships have been discovered. The Gokstad vessel, shown in the illustration, is of oak, twenty- 
eight feet long and sixteen feet broad in the center. It has seats for sixteen pairs of rowers, 
a mast for a single sail, and a rudder on the right or starboard side. The gunwale was 
decorated with a series of shields, painted alternately black and gold. 


inserted in the church services: “From the fury of the North¬ 
men, good Lord, deliver us.” The Northmen eventually colo¬ 
nized many of the lands which they visited. The accompanying 
map shows their extensive discoveries and settlements, together 
with the dates when these were made. 

Iceland, which was occupied by the Norwegians, soon became 
almost a second Norway in language, literature, and customs. 
It remains to-day an outpost of Scandinavian culture. An Ice- 




Northmen and Normans 


229 


lander, Eric the Red, led an expedition to Greenland. He called 
the country by that name, not because it was green, but because, 
as he said, “ there is nothing like a good name to The North- 
attract settlers.” Leif Ericsson, his son, voyaged men in the 
still farther westward, and about the year 1000 West 
he seems to have visited the coast of North America. The 
Northmen, however, did not follow up their explorations by 
lasting settlements. All memory of the far western lands 
faded before long from the minds of men. The curtain fell 
on the New World, not again to rise until the time of Columbus 
and Cabot. ) 

The Norwegians had taken the leading part in the exploration 
of the West. The Swedes, on account of their geographical 
situation, were naturally the most active in expe- The North _ 
ditions to the East. They overran Finland, whose men in the 
rude inhabitants, the Finns, were of Asiatic origin. East 
Sweden ruled Finland throughout the Middle Ages. The 
Swedes also entered Russia, and their leader, Ruric, established 
a dynasty which reigned over Slavic peoples for more than 
seven hundred years. 

The history of the Northmen in France began when a French 
king granted to a Viking chieftain, Rollo, dominion over the 
region about the lower Seine. Rollo agreed to Normandy 
accept Christianity and to acknowledge the French and the 
ruler. The district ceded to Rollo was later called Normans 
the duchy of Normandy. Its Scandinavian settlers, hence¬ 
forth known as Normans, 1 soon became thoroughly French in 
language and culture. It was amazing to see how quickly the 
descendants of wild sea-rovers put off their heathen ways and 
made their new home a Christian land, noted for its churches, 
monasteries, and schools. 

One of the dukes of Normandy, the famous William the Con¬ 
queror, added England to the Norman dominions, Norman con _ 
as the result of his victory in the battle of Hast- quest of 
ings in 1066. The island had previously been England 
overrun by Jutes, Angles, and Saxons after the middle of the 

1 “Norman” is a softened form of “Northmen.” 


230 


The Middle Ages 


fifth century, and by the Danes during the ninth, tenth, and 
eleventh centuries. The Normans thus contributed a third 
Teutonic element to the English population. 

During the eleventh century the Normans found still another 
field in which to display their energy and daring. They turned 
Norman con- southward to the Mediterranean and created in 
quest of southern Italy and Sicily a Norman state known 
Italy and as the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The Normans 

Sicily governed it for only about one hundred and fifty 

years, but under other rulers it lasted until the middle of 
the nineteenth century, wlien the present kingdom of Italy came 
into existence. 



A Scene from the Bayeux Tapestry 


Museum of Bayeux, Normandy 

The Bayeux Tapestry, which almost certainly belongs to the time of the Norman Con¬ 
quest, is a strip of coarse linen cloth, about 230 feet long by 20 inches wide, embroidered in 
worsted thread of eight different colors. There are seventy-two scenes picturing various 
events in the history of the Norman Conquest. The illustration given above represents an 
attack of Norman cavalry on the English shield wall at the battle of Hastings. 


74. Feudalism 

The empire which Charlemagne founded broke up during the 
ninth century into separate kingdoms. The rulers who suc- 
Deciine of ceeded him in France, Germany, and Italy had 
the royal little real authority. During this dark age it was 
really impossible for a king to govern with a 
strong hand. The absence of good roads or of other easy means 
of communication made it difficult for him to move troops 














Feudalism 


231 


quickly from one district to another, in order to quell revolts. 
Even had good roads existed, the lack of ready money would 
have prevented him from maintaining a strong army devoted to 
his interests. Moreover, the king’s subjects, as yet not welded 
into a nation, felt toward him no sentiments of loyalty and 
affection. They cared far less for their king, of whom they 
knew little, than for their own local lords who dwelt near them. 

The decline of the royal authority meant that the chief 
functions of government came to be more and more performed 
by the nobles, who were the great landowners of x ncrease( j 
the kingdom. Under Charlemagne these men had power of the 
been the king’s officials, appointed by him and nobles 
holding office at his pleasure. Under his successors they 
tended to become almost independent princes. Western 
Europe thus entered the age of feudalism . 1 

Feudalism in Europe was not a unique development. Par¬ 
allels to it may be found in other parts of the world. When¬ 
ever the state becomes incapable of protecting p ara u e i st0 
life and property, powerful men in each locality European 
will themselves undertake this duty; they will feudalism 
assume the burden of their own defense and of those weaker 
men who seek their aid. Such was the situation in ancient 
Egypt for several hundred years, in medieval Persia, and in 
modern Japan until about two generations ago. 

European feudalism arose and flourished in the countries 
which had formed Charlemagne’s empire, that is, in France, 
Germany, and northern Italy. It also spread to Extent of 
Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, and the Christian European 
states of Spain. Toward the close of the eleventh feudalism 
century the Normans transplanted it into England, southern 
Italy, and Sicily. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries 
the crusaders introduced it into the kingdoms which they 
founded in the Near East. Still later, in the fourteenth century, 
the Scandinavian countries became acquainted with feudalism. 

The basis of feudal society was usually the landed estate. 

1 The word comes from the medieval Latin feudum , from which are derived the 
French fief and the English fee. 


232 


The Middle Ages 


Here lived the feudal noble, surrounded by dependents over 
Feudal whom he exercised the rights of a petty sovereign, 

sovereignty He could tax them ; he could require them to give 
him military assistance; he could try them in his courts. A 



Possessions of the Count or Champagne 

(12th Century) 


great noble even enjoyed the privilege of declaring war, making 
treaties, and coining money. How, it will be asked, did these 
rights and privileges arise? 


































































Feudalism 


233 


Owing to the decay of commerce and industry, land had be¬ 
come practically the only form of wealth in the early Middle 
Ages. The king, who was regarded as the absolute Feudal ten- 
owner of the soil, would pay his officials for their ure of land 
services by giving them the use of a certain amount of land. 
In the same way, one who had received large estates would 
parcel them out among his followers, as a reward for their 
support. An unscrupulous noble might sometimes seize the 
lands of his neighbors and compel them to become his tenants. 
Sometimes, too, those who owned land in their own right might 
surrender the title to it in favor of a noble, who then became 
their protector. An estate in land which a person held of a 
superior lord, on condition of performing some “honorable” 
service, was called a fief. A fief was inheritable, going at the 
holder’s death to his oldest son. If a man had no legal heir, the 
fief went back to the lord. 

The tie which bound the tenant who accepted a fief to the 
lord who granted it was called vassalage. Every holder of land 
was in theory, though not always in fact, the vassal Vassalage 
of some lord. At the apex of the feudal pyramid 
stood the king, the supreme landlord, who was supposed to hold 
his land from God; below the king stood the greater lords 
(dukes, marquises, counts, barons), with large estates; and 
below them came the lesser lords, or knights, whose possessions 
were considered to be too small for further subdivision. 

The vassal owed various services to the lord. In time of war 
he did garrison duty at the lord’s castle and joined him in 
military expeditions. In time of peace the vassal 
attended the lord on ceremonial occasions, gave £esand S6rV ~ 
him the benefit of his advice, when asked, and money pay- 
helped him as a judge in trying cases. The vassal, of the 

under certain circumstances, was also required to 
make money payments. When a new heir succeeded to the 
fief, the lord received from him a sum usually equivalent to one 
year’s revenue of the estate. This payment was called a 
“relief.” Again, if a man sold his fief, the lord demanded 
another large sum from the purchaser, before giving his consent 



Chateau Gaillard (Restored) 


The finest of all medieval castles. Located on a high hill overlooking the Seine, about 
twenty miles from Rouen. Built by Richard the Lion-hearted within a twelvemonth (1197— 
1198 a.d.) and by him called “ Saucy Castle.” It was captured a few years later by the 
French king, Philip Augustus, and was dismantled early in the seventeenth century. The 
castle consisted of three distinct series of fortifications, besides the keep, which in this case 
was merely a strong tower. 


234 



























Feudalism 


235 


to the transaction. Vassals were also expected to raise money 
for the lord’s ransom, in case he was made prisoner of war, to 
meet the expenses connected with the knighting of his eldest 
son, and to provide a dowry for his eldest daughter. Such 
exceptional payments went by the name of “aids.” 

The vassal, in return for his services and payments, looked to 
the lord for the protection of life and property. The lord agreed 
to secure him in the enjoyment of his fief, to guard The lord , s 
him against his enemies, and to see that in all duty to the 
matters he received just treatment. This was no vassal 
slight undertaking. 

The ceremony of homage symbolized the whole feudal rela¬ 
tionship. One who proposed to become a vassal and hold a fief 
came into the lord’s presence, bareheaded and un- ^ 
armed, knelt down, placed his hands between those 
of the lord, and promised henceforth to become his “man” 
(Latin homo). The lord then kissed him and raised him to his 
feet. After the ceremony the vassal placed his hands upon the 
Bible, or upon sacred relics, and swore to remain faithful to his 
lord. This was the oath of “fealty.” The lord then gave the 
vassal some object — a stick, a clod of earth, a lance, or a glove 
— in token of the fief with the possession of which he was now 
“invested.” 

The feudal tenure of land, coupled with the custom of vassal- 
age, made in some degree for security and order. Each noble 
was attached to the lord above him by the bond Feudalism a 
of personal service and the oath of fealty. To his form of local 
vassals beneath him he was at once protector, g° vernment 
benefactor, and friend. Feudal obligations, of course, were not 
always strictly observed. Both lords and vassals often broke 
their engagements when it seemed profitable to do so. They 
had many quarrels and indulged in frequent warfare. Feu¬ 
dalism, despite its defects, was better than anarchy. The 
feudal nobles drove back the pirates and hanged the brigands 
and enforced the laws, as no feeble king could do. Feudal¬ 
ism provided in this way a rude form of local government for 
a rude society. 


236 


The Middle Ages 


75. Knighthood and Chivalry 


The outward mark of feudalism was the castle, where the lord 
resided and from which he ruled his fief. Defense formed the 
The castle as primary purpose of the castle. Until the intro- 
a fortress duction of gunpowder and cannon, the only siege 
weapons employed were those known in ancient times. They 
included machines for hurling heavy stones and iron bolts, 
battering rams, and movable towers, from which the besiegers 
crossed over to the walls. Such engines could best be used on 
firm, level ground. Consequently, a castle would often be 

erected on a high 
cliff or hill, or on 
an island, or in 
the center of a 
swamp. A castle 
without such nat¬ 
ural defenses 
would be sur¬ 
rounded by a 
deep ditch (the 
“moat”), usually 
filled with water. 
If the besiegers 
could not batter 
down or undermine the massive walls, they adopted the slower 
method of a blockade and tried to starve the garrison into sur¬ 
rendering. But it was very difficult to capture a well built, 
well provisioned castle. 

A visitor to a castle crossed the drawbridge over the moat and 
approached the narrow doorway, which was protected by a tower 
The castle as on each side. If he was admitted, the iron grating 
a home (“portcullis”) rose slowly on its creaking pulleys, 

the heavy, wooden doors swung open, and he found himself in 
the courtyard, commanded by the great central tower (“keep”), 
where the lord and his family lived, especially in time of war. 
At the summit of the keep rose a platform whence a sentinel 



Falconry 

From a manuscript of the thirteenth century in the Bibliotheque 
Nationale, Paris. 





Knighthood and Chivalry 


237 


surveyed the country far and wide; below, two stories under¬ 
ground, lay the prison, dark, damp, and dirty. A castle usually 
contained a hall for the lord’s residence in time of peace, an 
armory, a chapel, kitchens, and stables, as well as accom¬ 
modations for the lord’s servants and soldiers. 

Life within the castle must have been rather dull. There 
were some games, especially chess, which was an Amusements 
importation from the East. Banqueting formed of the nobles 
the chief indoor amusement. The lord and his retainers 



* 


The Making of a Knight 

From a manuscript of the thirteenth century in the British Museum, London. A king is 
shown girding on the sword of the new knight, while attendants fasten on his spurs. 


sat down to a gluttonous feast and, as they ate and drank, 
watched the pranks of a professional jester, or “fool,” listened 
to the songs and music of minstrels, and, it may be, heard with 
wonder the tales of far-off countries brought by some traveler. 
A common sport outside castle walls was hunting in the 
forests and game preserves. Deer, bears, and wild boars were 
hunted with hounds; for smaller animals trained hawks, or 
falcons, were employed. 

The armor used in medieval times was gradually perfected, 
until at length the knight became a living fortress. He wore 















































238 


The Middle Ages 


at first a cloth or leather tunic, covered with iron rings or scales, 
and an iron cap with nose guard. He afterward adopted chain 
Arms and mail, with a hood of the same material for the 
armor head. Still later he began to wear heavy plate 

armor, weighing fifty pounds or more, and a helmet with a 
visor which could be raised or lowered. Thus completely 
incased in metal, provided with shield, lance, straight sword, 
or battleax, and mounted on a powerful horse, the knight could 
ride down almost any number of poorly armed peasants. It 

was not until the develop¬ 
ment of missile weapons — 
the longbow and later the 
musket — that the foot 
soldier resumed his impor¬ 
tance in warfare. 

The nobles regarded the 
right of waging war on one 
Private another as 

warfare their most 

cherished privilege. A vas¬ 
sal might fight with the 
lord to whom he had done 
homage, in order to secure 
independence from him, 
with a bishop or abbot 
whom he disliked for any reason, with his weaker fellow vas¬ 
sals, and even with his own vassals. Fighting became almost 
a form of business enterprise, which enriched the nobles and 
their retainers through the sack of castles, the plunder of 
villages, and the ransom of prisoners. Every hill became a 
stronghold and every plain, a battlefield. Such private war¬ 
fare, though rarely very bloody, spread havoc throughout 
the land. The kings, as their power increased in western 
Europe, naturally sought to stop the constant fighting in their 
dominions. The Norman rulers of Normandy, England, 
and the Two Sicilies restrained their turbulent nobles with a 
strong hand. Peace came later in most parts of the Continent; 



Mounted Knight 

Seal of Robert Fitzwalter, showing a mounted knight 
in complete mail armor; date about 1265. 










Knighthood and Chivalry 


239 


n£d | 

Jr 



in Germany, “fist right” (the rule of the strongest) prevailed 
until the end of the fifteenth century. The abolition of private 
warfare was the first step in Europe toward universal peace. 
The second step — the abolition of public war between nations 
— is yet to be taken. 

The prevalence of private warfare made the use of arms a 

profession requiring special training. A nobleman’s son served 

for a number 
. Knighthood 

01 years as a 

squire in his father’s castle 
or in that of some other lord. 

When he became of age and 
had been drilled in warlike 
exercises, he might be made 
a knight. The ceremony 
of conferring knighthood 
was often most elaborate. 

If, however, a squire for 
valorous conduct received 
knighthood on the battle¬ 
field, the accolade by stroke 
of the sword formed the only 
ceremony. 

As manners softened and 
Christian teach- 

. Chivalry 

mgs began to 

affect feudal society, knighthood developed into chivalry. The 
Church, which opposed the warlike excesses of feudalism, 
took the knight under her wing and bade him be always a 
true soldier of Christ. The* “good knight” was he who 
respected his word, who never took an unfair advantage 
of another, who defended women, children, and orphans 
against their oppressors, and who sought to make justice 
and right prevail in the world. Needless to say, the “good 
knight” appears oftener in romance than in sober history. 
Chivalry produced some improvement in manners, particularly 
by insisting on the ideal of personal honor and by fostering 


Champions Fighting 

A form of trial used in feudal times was the 
judicial duel. The accuser and the accused fought 
with each other, and the conqueror won the case. 
When one of the adversaries could not fight, he 
secured a champion to take his place. The picture 
reproduced above is from a thirteenth-century tile 
found on the site of Chertsey Abbey, England. 


240 


The Middle Ages 


greater regard for women (though only those of the upper class). 
Our modern notion of the conduct befitting a “gentleman” 
goes back in part to the old chivalric code. Chivalry expressed, 
however, simply the sentiments of the warlike nobles. It was 
an aristocratic institution. The knight despised and did his 
best to keep in subjection the toiling peasantry, upon whose 
backs rested the real burden of feudal society. 

The all-absorbing passion for fighting led to the practice of 
mimic warfare in the shape of jousts and tournaments. These 
Jousts and exercises formed the medieval equivalent of the 
tournaments Greek athletic games and the Roman gladiatorial 
combats. The joust was a contest between two knights; the 
tournament, between two bands of knights. The contests 



From a French manuscript of the early fourteenth century. Shows knights jousting 
with cronels on their lances. 


took place in a railed-off space, called the “lists,” about which 
the spectators gathered. Each knight wore upon his helmet 
the scarf or color of his lady and fought with her eyes upon him. 
Victory went to the one who unhorsed his opponent or broke 
in the proper manner the greatest number of lances. The 
beaten knight forfeited horse and armor and had to pay a 
ransom to the victor. Sometimes he lost his life, especially 
when the participants fought with real weapons and not with 
blunted lances and pointless swords. The Church now and then 
tried to stop these performances, but they remained universally 
popular until the close of the Middle Ages . 1 

1 Sir Walter Scott’s novel, Ivanhoe (chapter xii), contains an interesting descrip¬ 
tion of a tournament. 



The Byzantine Empire 


241 


76. The Byzantine Empire 

If western Europe during the early Middle Ages presented a 
scene of violence and confusion, while the Teutonic peoples 
were settling in their new homes, a different picture The Greek 
was presented in eastern Europe. Here the Roman or Byzantine 
Empire survived and continued to uphold, for Empire 
nearly a thousand years after the deposition of Romulus Augus- 
tulus, the Roman tradition of law and order. After 476 it is 
often called the “ Greek Empire,” since it became more and more 



Naval Battle Showing Use op “ Greek Fire ” 


From a Byzantine manuscript of the fourteenth century at Madrid. “ Greek fire ” in 
marine warfare was most commonly propelled through long tubes of copper, which were 
placed on the prow of a ship and managed by a gunner. Combustibles might also be kept in 
tubes flung by hand and exploded on board the enemy’s vessel. 

Greek in character, owing to the loss of the western provinces in 
the fifth century and then of Syria and Egypt in the seventh 
century. The name “Byzantine Empire,” which is in common 
use, most appropriately describes the empire in still later times, 
when its possessions were reduced to Constantinople (ancient 
Byzantium) and the territory in the neighborhood of that city. 

The long life of the Byzantine Empire is one of the marvels 
of history. Its vitality seems the more remarkable, when one 
considers that it had no easily defensible frontiers, contained 
many different peoples with little in common, and on all 






242 


The Middle Ages 


sides faced hostile states. The empire lasted so long, because 
Vitality of the °* * ts vast wealt h an d resources, its despotic, 
Byzantine centralized government, the strength of its army, 
Empire anc [ ^ a i most impregnable position occupied 

by Constantinople, the capital city. 

The history of the Byzantine Empire shows how constantly 
it was engaged in contests with Oriental peoples — first the 
importance of P ers i ans > then the Arabs, and finally the Turks — 
the Byzan- who attacked its domains. By resisting the 
tine Empire a d vanC e of the invaders, the old empire protected 
the young states of Europe until they had become strong 
enough to meet and repulse the hordes of Asia. This service 
was not less important than that which had been performed by 
Greece and Rome in the contests with the Persians and the 
Carthaginians (§§39, 50). 

The merchant ships of Constantinople carried on much of the 
commerce of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. The 
Byzantine products of Byzantine industry were exchanged at 
commerce that city for the spices, drugs, and precious stones 
and industry q £ g ast Byzantine wares also found their way 
into Italy and France and, by way of the Russian rivers, reached 
the heart of eastern Europe. Russia, in turn, furnished Con¬ 
stantinople with honey, wax, fur, wool, grain, and slaves. A 
traveler of the twelfth century well described the city as a 
metropolis “common to all the world, without distinction of 
country or religion.” 

Many of the emperors at Constantinople were great builders. 
Byzantine architecture became a leading form of art. Its most 
Byzantine striking feature is the dome, which replaced the 
art flat, wooden roof used in the churches of Italy. 

The exterior of a Byzantine church is plain and unimposing, 
but the interior is adorned on a magnificent scale. The eyes of 
the worshipers are dazzled by the walls faced with marble 
slabs of various colors, by the columns of polished marble, 
jasper, and porphyry, and by the brilliant mosaic pictures of 
gilded glass. The entire impression is one of richness and 
splendor. Byzantine artists, though not very good painters and 


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Exterior 


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SANCTA SOPHIA, CONSTANTINOPLE 
Built by Justinian and dedicated on Christmas Day, 538 a.d. The main building is 
roofed over by a great central dome, 107 feet in diameter and 179 feet in height. After the 
Ottoman Turks turned the church into a mosque, a minaret was erected at each of the four 
exterior angles. The outside of Sancta Sophia is somewhat disappointing, but the interior, 
with its walls and columns of polished marble, granite, and porphyry, is magnificent. The 
crystal balustrades, pulpits, and large metal disks are Turkish. 





















The Byzantine Empire 


243 


sculptors, excelled in decorative art. Their carvings in wood 
and ivory and their work in metal, together with their 
embroideries, enamels, miniatures and mosaics, enjoyed a high 
reputation in medieval Europe. 

The libraries and museums of Constantinople preserved classi¬ 
cal learning. The wisest men of the day resided in that city, 
where they taught philosophy, law, medicine, and Byzantine 
science to thousands of pupils. Byzantine students scholarship 
did not make many new discoveries, preferring to compile huge 
encyclopedias from the books which antiquity had handed 
down to them. Eastern Europe thus cherished the productions 
of classical learning until the time came when western Europe 
was ready to receive them and profit by them. 

The break-up of the Roman Empire brought about the 
separation of Eastern and Western Christianity. The Eastern 
or Greek Church had for its spiritual head the The Greek 
patriarch of Constantinople, just as the Western or Church 
Roman Church had a head in the pope or bishop of Rome. The 
two churches remained in formal unity until 1054, when disputes 
between them on points of doctrine led to their final rupture. 
They have never since united. The missionary zeal of the 
Greek Church resulted in the conversion of the barbarians who 
entered southeastern Europe during the early Middle Ages. 
At the present time, most of the Christian inhabitants of the 
Balkan Peninsula, including Greeks, Jugoslavs, Bulgarians, 
and Rumanians, belong to the Greek Church. Its greatest 
victory was the conversion of the Russians, toward the close of 
the tenth century. With Christianity all these peoples received 
the use of letters and some knowledge of Roman law and methods 
of government. Constantinople was to them, henceforth, such 
a center of religion and culture as Rome was to the Germans. 

The heart of Byzantine civilization always continued to be 
Constantinople. It was the largest, most populous, and most 
wealthy place in medieval Europe. When London, Constanti- 
Paris, and Venice were small and mean towns, n °P le 
visitors to Constantinople found paved and lighted streets, 
parks, public baths, hospitals, theaters, schools, libraries, 


244 


The Middle Ages 


museums, beautiful churches, and magnificent palaces. The 
renown of Constantinople penetrated even into barbarian lands. 
The Northmen called it Micklegarth, the “Great City”; the 
Russians knew of it as Tsarigrad, the “City of the Caesars.” 



Both names did not lack appropriateness, but its own people 
best described it as the “City guarded by God.” 

77. The Arabs and Islam 

Arabia during ancient times had appeared in history mainly 
as a reservoir of Semitic-speaking tribes, who drifted into 
The Arabs Egypt, along the eastern shores of the Mediter- 
before ranean, and into Babylonia, yet always leaving 

Mohammed Qt ^ e} . tr i bes ^ind them to supply fresh in¬ 
vasions in the future. The interior of the peninsula, except 
for occasional oases, was a desert, over which the Arabs 
wandered with their sheep, cattle, horses, and camels. There 
were patches of fertile land along the northern and western 
coasts, where the inhabitants had reached a considerable degree 




















The Arabs and Islam 


2 45 


of civilization. They practiced agriculture, engaged in traffic 
upon the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, and lived in walled towns. 
Every year for four months the Arabs ceased fighting with one 
another and went on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Here stood a 
famous sanctuary called the Kaaba (Cube). It contained idols 
and a small black stone (probably a meteorite), which was 
regarded with religious awe. Although most of the Arabs 
were idolaters, yet some of them believed in Allah, the “ Un¬ 
known God” of the Semites. The many Jews and Christians 
in Arabia also helped to spread abroad the conception of one God 
and thus to prepare the way for the prophet of a monotheistic 
religion. 

This prophet, Mohammed, 1 was born at Mecca about 570. 
Having been left an orphan at an early age, he received no 
regular education and for some time earned his M h d 
living as a shepherd and camel driver. His mar¬ 
riage to a rich widow enabled him to settle down as a prosper¬ 
ous, though still undistinguished, merchant at Mecca. Moham¬ 
med, however, seems always to have been spiritually minded. 
When he was forty years old the call came to him in a vision 
(he said) to preach a new religion to the Arabs. It was very 
simple, but in its simplicity lay its strength: “ There is no god 
but God, and Mohammed is the prophet of God.” 

Mohammed made his first converts in his wife, his children, 
and the friends who knew him best. Then, becoming bolder, he 
began to preach publicly. In spite of his eloquence The Hegira, 
and obvious sincerity, he met a discouraging recep- 622 
tion. A few slaves and poor freemen became his followers, but 
most people regarded him as a madman. Mohammed’s disci¬ 
ples, called Moslems, 2 were bitterly persecuted by the citizens 
of Mecca, who resented the prophet’s attacks on idolatry. 
Finally, Mohammed and his converts took refuge in the city 
of Medina, where some of the inhabitants had already accepted 

1 The earlier spelling was Mahomet. 

2 From the Arabic muslim, “one who surrenders himself ” (to God’s will). During 
the Middle Ages the Moslems to their Christian enemies were commonly known as 
Saracens, a term which is still in use. 



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The Arabs and Islam 


247 

his teachings. This was the famous Hegira (Flight) of the 
Prophet. 1 

Mohammed at Medina occupied a position of honor and 
influence. The people welcomed him gladly and made him 
their chief magistrate. As his adherents increased After the 
in number, he began to combine fighting with He s ira 
preaching. His military expeditions against the Arab tribes 
proved very successful. Many of the conquered Bedouins 
enlisted under his banner and at length captured Mecca 
for the Prophet. He treated its inhabitants leniently, but 
threw down the idols in the Kaaba. After the submission of 
Mecca the Arabs throughout the peninsula abandoned idolatry 
and accepted the new religion. Mohammed died ten years 
after the Hegira. His tomb at Medina is still visited by pious 
Moslems. 

Moslem writers make Mohammed a saint; Christian writers, 
until recent times, have called him an “impostor.” We know 
that he was a man of simple habits, who, even in Mohammed’s 
the days of his prosperity, lived on dates, barley character 
bread, and water, mended his woolen garments, and attended to 
his own wants. He was mild and gentle, a lover of children, 
devoted to his friends, and forgiving toward his foes. We 
know, too, that he was so deeply impressed with the conscious¬ 
ness of his religious mission that he was ready to give up wealth 
and an honorable position and face for years the ridicule and 
hatred of the people of Mecca. His faults — deceitfulness, 
superstitiousness, sensuality — were those of the Arabs of his 
time. Their existence in Mohammed’s character should not 
prevent our recognition of his real greatness as a prophet and as 
a statesman. 

The religion which Mohammed taught is called Islam, an 
Arabic word meaning‘ ‘ surrender ” or “ resignation. ’ ’ Religious 
This religion has a sacred book, the Koran, teachings of 
It contains the speeches, prayers, and other the Koran 
utterances of Mohammed, at various times during his career. 

1 The year 622, in which the Hegira occurred, marks the beginning of the Moslem 


era. 


248 


The Middle Ages 


The doctrines found in the Koran show many adaptations from 
the Jewish and Christian religions. Like them, Islam empha¬ 
sizes the unity of God and the immortality of the soul. Like 
them, also, Islam recognizes the existence of prophets, includ¬ 
ing Abraham, Moses, and Jesus (whom it regards as a prophet), 
but insists that Mohammed was the last and greatest of the 
prophets. The account of the creation and fall of man is 
taken, with variations, from the Old Testament. The descrip¬ 
tions of the resurrection of the dead and the last judgment, 
and the division of the future world into paradise and hell, the 
former for believers in Islam, the latter for those who have 
refused to accept it, were also largely borrowed from other relig¬ 
ions. 

The Koran imposes on the faithful Moslem five great obliga¬ 
tions. First, he must recite, at least once in his life, aloud, cor- 
Observances rectly, and with full understanding, the short 
of Islam creed : “There is no god but God, and Mohammed 
is the prophet of God.” Second, he must pray five times a 
day: at dawn, just after noon, before sunset, just after sunset, 
and at the end of the day. Before engaging in prayer the 
worshiper washes face, hands, and feet; during the prayer he 
turns toward Mecca and bows his head to the ground. Third, 
he must observe a strict fast, from morning to night, during 
every day of Ramadan , the ninth month of the Mohammedan 
year. Fourth, he must give alms to the poor. Fifth, he must, 
“if he is able,” undertake at least one pilgrimage to Mecca. 
The annual visit of tens of thousands of pilgrims to the holy 
city helps to preserve the feeling of brotherhood among Moslems 
all over the world. These five obligations are the “pillars” 
of Islam. 

Islam as a religious system is exceedingly simple. It does 
not provide any elaborate ceremonies of worship and permits 
Organiza- no altars, pictures, or images in the mosque. Islam 
ti°n of Islam even lacks a priesthood. Every Moslem acts as 
his own priest. There is, however, an official who on Friday, the 
Mohammedan Sabbath, offers up public prayers in the mosque 
and delivers a sermon to the assembled worshipers. All work is 


The Arabs and Islam 


249 

suspended during this service, but at its close ordinary activities 
are resumed. 

The Koran furnishes a moral code for the followers of Islam. 
It contains several noteworthy prohibitions. The Moslem is 
not to make images, to engage in games of chance, Moral teach _ 
to eat pork, or to drink wine. The Koran also ings of the 
teaches many active virtues, including reverence Koran 
toward parents, protection of widows and orphans, charity 
toward the poor, kindness to slaves, and gentle treatment of 
the lower animals. On the whole, it must be admitted that the 
regulations of the Koran did much to restrain the vices of the 
Arabs and to provide them with higher standards of right and 
wrong. Islam marked a great advance over Arabian heathenism. 

Islam was a conquering religion, for it proclaimed the right¬ 
eousness of a “holy war” against unbelievers. Pride and greed 
also combined with fanaticism to draw the Arabs Arab 
out of the desert upon a career of conquest. The conquests 
map shows how large a part of the civilized world, from the Indus 
westward to the Pyrenees, came under their sway within about 
a century after the death of Mohammed. The Arabs failed, 
however, to capture Constantinople, which endured a desperate 
siege by the combined Moslem army and navy, and the Franks 
checked their further advance into western Europe at the 
bloody battle of Tours in 732. The Arabs treated their subjects 
with liberality. No massacres and no persecutions occurred. 
The conquered peoples were not compelled to accept Islam at 
the point of the sword. In course of time, however, many 
Christians in Syria and Egypt and most of the Zoroastrians 
(§ 27) in Persia embraced the new religion, in order to avoid pay¬ 
ing tribute and to acquire the privileges of Moslem citizenship. 

The title of caliph, meaning “successor” or “representative,” 
had been first assumed by Mohammed’s father-in-law, who was 
chosen to succeed the Prophet as the political and The cali- 
religious head of Islam. Disputes between rival P hate 
claimants to this office before long split up the Arabian Empire 
into two caliphates, one ruling at Bagdad over the Moslems in 
Asia, the other ruling at Cordova in Spain. A third caliphate, 


250 


The Middle Ages 


with its capital at Cairo in Egypt, afterward arose in North 
Africa. The dismemberment and consequent weakening of the 
Arabian Empire ended for a time the era of Moslem conquest. 

The Arabs lacked the Roman genius for empire-building, but 
they rivaled the Romans as absorbers and spreaders of civilization. 
Arabian Their conquests brought them into contact with 
culture highly civilized peoples of the Near East and 

along the shores of the Mediterranean. What they learned 
from Greeks, Syrians, Persians, Jews, and Hindus they im- 



“ Mosque of Omar,” Jerusalem 


More correctly called the Dome of the Rock. It was erected in 691 a.d., but many 
restorations have taken place since that date. The walls inclosing the entire structure were 
built in the ninth century, and the dome is attributed to Saladin (1189 a.d.). This building, 
with its brilliant tiles covering the walls and its beautiful stained glass, is a fine example of 
Mohammedan architecture. 


proved upon, thus building up a culture which for several cen¬ 
turies far surpassed that of western Europe. The Arabs prac¬ 
ticed farming in a scientific way, understood rotation of crops, 
employed fertilizers, and knew how to graft and produce new 
varieties of plants and fruits. Their manufactures, especially 
of textile fabrics, metal, leather, glass, and pottery, were cele¬ 
brated for beauty of design and perfection of workmanship. 
They did much in mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, geogra¬ 
phy, and medicine, carrying further the old Greek investigations 








The Crusades 


251 


in these branches of science. Arab universities, libraries, and 
observatories, especially in Spain, were visited by Christian 
students, who became acquainted with Moslem learning and 
helped to introduce it into Italy, France, and other countries. 
Painting and sculpture owe little to the Arabs, but their archi¬ 
tecture, based in part on Byzantine and Persian models, reached 
a high level of excellence. The influence of the Arabs upon our 
civilization is shown by the Arabic origin of such words as 
“muslin,” “damask,” “mattress,” “cupola,” “zenith,” and 
“cipher,” and especially of words beginning with the prefix 
al (the definite article in Arabic). In English these include 
“algebra,” “alkali,” “alcohol,” “almanac,” “alcove,” “Aldeb- 
aran” (the star), and “alchemy” (whence “chemistry”). 

The Arabian Empire in Asia was overrun during the eleventh 
century by the Seljuk Turks, whose leader assumed the caliph’s 
political authority at Bagdad. The coming of the The Arabs 
Seljuk Turks into the Near East was a very great and the Sel- 
misfortune, for these barbarians did nothing to Juk Turks 
preserve and extend Arabian culture. They did begin, however, 
a new era of Moslem conquest, and within a few years they 
had won almost all Asia Minor from the Byzantine Empire. 
The new Turkish menace to Christendom induced the emperor 
at Constantinople to call on the chivalry of western Europe for 
aid, thus inaugurating the crusades. 

78. The Crusades 

The crusades were first and foremost a spiritual enterprise. 
They sprang from the pilgrimages which Christians had long 
been accustomed to make to the scenes of Christ’s The cnlsa( j es 
life on earth. Men considered it a wonderful andpii- 
privilege to visit the place where He was born, images 
to kiss the spot where He died, and to kneel in prayer at His 
tomb. The eleventh century saw an increased zeal for pil¬ 
grimages, and from this time travelers to the Holy Land were 
very numerous. For greater security they often joined them¬ 
selves in companies and marched under arms. It needed little 
to transform such pilgrims into crusaders. The Arab conquests 


252 


The Middle Ages 


had not interrupted the stream of pilgrims, for the early caliphs 
were more tolerant of unbelievers than Christian rulers were of 
heretics. After the conquests of the Seljuk Turks pilgrimages 
became more difficult and dangerous. The stories which floated 
back to Europe of the outrages on Christian pilgrims and shrines 
awakened an intense desire to rescue the Holy Land from 


“infidels.” 



The crusades were 
not simply an expres- 

The crusades sion of the 
as knightly simple 
enterprises faith of 

the Middle Ages. 
Something more than 
religious enthusiasm 
sent an unending pro¬ 
cession of soldiers along 
the highways of Eu¬ 
rope and over the 
trackless wastes of Asia 
Minor to Jerusalem. 
The crusades, in fact, 
appealed strongly to 
the warlike instincts of 


The crusades 
as knightly 


Combat between Crusaders and Moslems 

A picture in a twelfth-century window, formerly in the 
church of St. Denis, near Paris. 


the feudal nobles, who saw in them an unequaled opportunity for 
acquiring fame, riches, lands, and power. The Normans were es¬ 
pecially stirred by the prospect of adventure and plunder which 
the crusading movement opened up. They had now established 
themselves in southern Italy and Sicily (§ 73), from which they 
looked across the Mediterranean for additional lands to conquer. 
Norman knights formed a very large element in several of the 
crusading armies. 

The first crusade, which-began in 1095, resulted in the capture 
of Jerusalem and the setting up of several small crusaders’ 
Course of states in Syria. These possessions were defended 
the crusades by two orders of fighting monks, known as the 
Hospitalers and the Templars. The Christians managed to 











The Crusades 


253 


keep Jerusalem for somewhat less than one hundred years. 
Acre, their last post in Syria, did not fall to the Moslems until 
1291, an event commonly regarded as the end of the crusades. 
The Hospitalers still retained the islands of Cyprus and Rhodes, 
which long served as a barrier to Moslem expansion over the 
Mediterranean. 

The crusades, judged by what they set out to accomplish, 
must be accounted a failure. After two centuries 

The crusades 

of conflict, and after a great expenditure of wealth and feudai- 
and human lives, the Holy Land remained in lsm 
Moslem hands. The indirect results of the crusades were, 
nevertheless, important. For in¬ 
stance, they helped to undermine 
feudalism. Thousands of nobles 
mortgaged or sold their lands in 
order to raise money for a crusading 
expedition. Thousands more per¬ 
ished in Syria, and their estates, 
through failure of heirs, went back 
to the Crown. Moreover, private 
warfare, that curse of the Middle 
Ages, also tended to die out with 
the departure for the Holy Land 
of so many unruly lords. 

The crusades created a constant 

demand for the transportation of 

men and supplies, encouraged shipbuilding, and extended 

the market for eastern wares in Europe. The 

_ i i . . . The crusades 

products of Damascus, Mosul, Alexandria, Cairo, and Medi- 

and other great cities were carried across the Med- terranean 

. T .. , . commerce 

iterranean to the Italian seaports, whence they 

found their way into all European lands. The elegance of 
the Orient, with its silks, tapestries, precious stones, perfumes, 
spices, pearls, and ivory, was so enchanting that an enthu¬ 
siastic crusader called it “the vestibule of Paradise.” 

The crusades also contributed to intellectual and social prog¬ 
ress. They brought the inhabitants of western Europe into 



Seal of a Knight Templar 

Shows the Cross above the Crescent. 


254 


The Middle Ages 


close relations with one another, with their fellow Christians 
of the Byzantine Empire, and with the natives of Asia Minor, 
The crusades Syria, and Egypt. The intercourse between Chris- 
and Euro- tians and Moslems was particularly stimulating, 
pean culture b ecause the Near East at this time surpassed the 
West in civilization. The crusaders enjoyed the advantages 
which come from travel in strange lands and among unfamiliar 
peoples. They went out from their castles or villages to see great 
cities, marble palaces, superb dresses, and elegant manners; they 
returned with finer tastes, broader ideas, and wider sympathies. 
The crusades opened up a new world. 


79 . Mongols and Ottoman Turks 

The extensive steppes of central Asia have formed, for thou¬ 
sands of years, the abode of nomadic tribes belonging to the 
Asiatic Mongoloid or Yellow Race. They were ever 

nomadism on the move, with their horses, oxen, sheep, and 

cattle, from one pasturage to another. They dwelt in tents 
and hut-wagons. Severe simplicity was their rule of life, for 
property consisted of little more than flocks and herds, clothes, 
and weapons. Constant practice in riding and scouting ac¬ 
customed them to fatigue and hardship, and the daily use of 
arms made every man a soldier. When population increased 
too rapidly, or when the steppes dried up and water failed, the 
inhabitants had no course open but to migrate farther and 
farther in search of food. Some of them overflowed into the 
fertile valleys of China, until at the close of the third century 
b.c. the Chinese rulers built the Great Wall, fifteen hundred 
miles in length, to keep them out (§ 14). Others turned west¬ 
ward and entered Europe between the Caspian Sea and the Ural 
Mountains, where the Asiatic steppes merge into the plains of 
Russia. 

One such nomadic people were the Huns, whom we find north 
of the Black Sea during the fourth century a.d. Roman writers 
describe their olive skins, little, turned-up noses, 
black, beady eyes, and generally ferocious char¬ 
acter. They spent much of their time on horseback, sweeping 


Huns 


255 


Mongols and Ottoman Turks 

over the country like a whirlwind and leaving destruction and 
death in their wake. It was the pressure of the Huns from 
behind which drove the Visigoths against the Roman frontiers, 
thus beginning the German invasions. The Huns subsequently 
crossed the Carpathians and occupied the region now called 
after them Hungary. Their leader, Attila, built up a military 
power, obeyed by many barbarous tribes from the Black Sea 
to the Rhine. Attila devastated the lands of the eastern 
emperor almost to the walls of Constantinople and then invaded 
Gaul. In this hour of danger Gallo-Romans and Germans 



Hut-wagon of the Mongols (Reconstruction) 

On the wagon was placed a sort of hut or pavilion made of wands bound together with 
narrow thongs. The structure was then covered with felt or cloth and provided with latticed 
windows. Hut-wagons, being very light, were sometimes of enormous size. 


united their forces and at the famous battle of Chalons (451) 
saved western Europe from being submerged under a wave of 
Asiatic barbarism. Attila died soon afterward, his empire went 
to pieces, and the Huns themselves mingled with the peoples 
whom they had conquered. 

The Bulgarians, who were akin to the Huns, made their 
appearance south of the lower Danube in the seventh century. 
For more than three hundred years these barba- „ , . 

Bulgarians 

rians, fierce and cruel, formed a menace to the 
Byzantine Empire. They settled in the country which now 
bears their name, accepted Christianity from Constantinople, 





256 


The Middle Ages 


and adopted the speech and customs of the Slavs. Modern 
Bulgaria is essentially a Slavic state. 

The Magyars entered central Europe toward the close of the 
ninth century. Again and again they swept into Germany, 
France, and northern Italy, ravaging far and 
wide. It was Otto the Great (§72) who stopped 
their raids. The Magyars then retired to their lands about 
the middle Danube, became Roman Catholic Christians, and 


founded the kingdom of Hungary. 
Modern Hungarians, except for their 
Asiatic language, are thoroughly 
Europeanized. 1 




northern Mongolia. The genius of 
one of their leaders, Jenghiz Khan, 
united them into a vast, conquering 
host, which to ruthless cruelty and 
passion for plunder added extraordi¬ 
nary efficiency in warfare. It may 
be said with truth of Jenghiz Khan 
that he had the most victorious of 
military careers and that he con- 


A Mongol 

After a Chinese drawing. 


structed the most extensive empire known to history. The 
map shows what an enormous stretch of territory — Christian, 
Moslem, Buddhist, and heathen — was overrun by Jenghiz 
Khan and his immediate successors. The Mongol Empire 
had a very loose organization, however, and during the four¬ 
teenth century it fell apart into a number of independent states, 
or khanates. 

1 The Magyar settlement in central Europe had the important result of dividing 
the Slavic peoples into three groups. Those who remained south of the Danube 
(Serbians, Croatians, etc.), were henceforth separated from the northwestern Slavs 
(Czechs, Slovaks, and Poles) and from the eastern Slavs (Russians). See the map 
facing page 320. * 











































































> 











H "'fa — ' • v T 

i 

























* 

, 




. 

i i i ■ 













































. 






































Mongols and Ottoman Turks 


257 


The location of Russia exposed it to the full force of the 
Mongol attack. The cities of Moscow and Kiev fell in quick 
succession, and before long the greater part of the Russia 
country became a part of the Golden Horde, as the under the 
western section of the Mongol realm was called. Mongols 
The Mongols are usually said to have Orientalized the Russian 
people. It seems clear, however, that they did not interfere 
with the language, religion, or laws of their subjects. The 
chief result of the Mon¬ 
gol conquest was to cut 
off Russia from the civ¬ 
ilization of the rest of 
Europe for upwards of 
three centuries. 

The Ottoman Turks, 
who settled in Asia 
Minor, were ottoman 
kinsmen of Turks 
the Seljuk Turks (§ 77). 

They accepted Islam 
from the latter, and 
their chieftain Othman 
(whence the name Otto¬ 
man) founded a new 
empire. During the 
first half of the fourteenth century the Ottoman Turks 
firmly established themselves in northwestern Asia Minor, 
along the beautiful shores washed by the Bosporus, the Sea 
of Marmora, and the Dardanelles. The second half of the 
same century found them in Europe, wresting province after 
province from the feeble hands of the eastern emperors. All 
that remained of the Byzantine Empire was Constantinople 
and a small district in its vicinity. 

Only a crusade, on a greater scale than any in the past, could 
have saved Constantinople. No crusade occurred, and in 1453 
the city fell to Mohammed II. The capture of Constanti¬ 
nople is rightly regarded as an epoch-making event. It 



Mohammed II 

A medal showing the strong face of the conqueror of 
Constantinople. 




258 


The Middle Ages 


meant the end, once for all, of the empire which had served so 
long as the rearguard of Christian civilization, as the bulwark 
Capture of W est against the East. Europe stood aghast 

Constantino- at a calamity which she had done so little to pre¬ 
pie, 1453 vent. The Christian powers have been paying 
dearly, even to our own age, for their failure to save Constan¬ 
tinople from Moslem hands. 

The Ottoman Turks, unlike the Bulgarians and Magyars, 
never entered the European family of nations. They kept their 
„ Asiatic language and Moslem faith and remained in 

Southeastern t Jf 

Europe under southeastern Europe, not a passing scourge, but an 
Turks tt<>man hiding oppressor of Christian lands. They have 
never created anything in science, art, literature 
commerce, or industry. Conquest was their one business in 
the world, and when they ceased conquering their decline set 
in. It was not until the end of the seventeenth century, 
however, that the Turkish Empire entered on that down¬ 
ward road which has now led to its practical extinction as a 
European power. 


cal boun¬ 
daries 


80 . National States 

Europe in 1914 included twenty national states. More have 
been added as a result of the World War. Their present boun- 
Geographi- dories only in part coincide with those fixed by 
geography. The British Isles, it is true, make up 
a single political unit, as nature seems to have 
intended, but Ireland has been in times past a very unwilling 
member of the United Kingdom. The Iberian Peninsula, 
bounded on the north by the Pyrenees, seems to form another 
natural political unit, yet within the peninsula there are two 
independent states. On the whole, such great mountain 
ranges as the Alps, Carpathians, and Balkans, and such great 
rivers as the Rhine, Danube, and Vistula, have failed to 
provide permanent frontiers for European states. 

It is still more difficult to trace racial boundaries in modern 
Europe. Peaceful migrations and armed invasions, beginning 


8 


4 


0 



Dominions of 'Wjilliam the Conqueror, 1066-87 

Wales: Independence suppressed by Edward I, 

1284; incorporated with England by Henry VIII, j 1536 

Scotland: Independence recognized by Edward SHETUAND 
IIIi 1328; joined with England in a personal union un- 
~~der James I, 1603; legislative union with England, j 1707 1SLANDS 

Ireland: Conquest completed by Cromwell, 1649;-- 

united with Great Britain, 1801 

English Pale at the end of the 15th century 


/ M 


Moray Firth 


fTrrf^D 


Ciilloc^i 


Aberdeen 


v ^ ^Montrose 
Dundee 

v pZf 

Uert °f Ta y 

of Forth 


Berwick-on- 


^-Uv.Dumfr 


y/y/yy,' 

Durham 

I* 


Donegal Ba£ 


Ci Stamford Bridge 

\Yrrk ' \ 


Drogheda 


o> DUBLIN 


Galway Ba\ 


’Lincoln: 


;N orwich- 


Limerick / ' i 
KlA 

\ V Waterfori 


St. David’sf 


fueenstown 


lardiffj 


’Dover 


Peveneey^ 


St.Valery/o 


Channel 


English 


Land’s End 


0 


The British Isles during the Middle Ages 

259 






















































26 o 


The Middle Ages 


in prehistoric times and continuing to the present, have led to 
much mixture of peoples. Nor is every European state one 
Racial and ' m l an g ua g e - France includes the district of Brit- 
linguistic tany, where a Celtic speech prevails. Switzerland 

boundaries F as French, German, and Italian speaking cantons. 
In the British Isles one may still hear Welsh, Gaelic (in the 
Highlands), and Irish. The possession of a common language 
undoubtedly tends to bring peoples together and keep them 
together, but it is not an indispensable condition of their unity. 

History, rather than geography, race, or even language, 
explains the present grouping of European states. When the 
St t ki Christian era opened, all the region between the 
North Sea and the Black Sea and from the Med¬ 
iterranean to the Rhine and the Danube belonged to the Roman 
Empire. This Romanized Europe made a solid whole, with one 
government, one law, and one language. Five hundred years 
passed, and Europe, as a result of the German invasions, 
began to split up into a number of separate, independent 
states. The process of state-making continued throughout the 
Middle Ages, in consequence of renewed invasions (principally 
those of the Northmen, Slavs, Arabs, Bulgarians, Magyars, 
Mongols, and Turks). The three strongest states in Europe at 
the end of the medieval period were England, France, and Spain. 

The dominions which William the Conqueror and his Nor¬ 
man knights won by the sword in 1066 (§ 73) included neither 
Expansion Wales, Scotland, nor Ireland. Their inhabitants 
of England (except in the Scottish Lowlands) were Celtic¬ 
speaking peoples, whom the Anglo-Saxon invaders of England 
never attempted to subdue. It was almost inevitable, however, 
that in process of time the British Isles should come under 
a single government. Unification began with the conquest 
of Wales by Edward I, near the close of the thirteenth 
century. He also annexed Scotland, but his weakling son, 
whom the Scots defeated, abandoned all claims to the country. 
It remained independent for the remainder of the medieval 
period. The English first entered Ireland in the second 
half of the twelfth century, but for a long time held only a 


m 


w if? 




Co *~t 

^ a> 

►—» r+> 

“ c/j 


o 3 



261 































































































262 


The Middle Ages 


small district about Dublin, known as the Pale. Ireland by 
its situation could scarcely fail to become attached to Great 
Britain, but the dividing sea combined with differences in race, 
language, and religion, and with English misgovernment, to 
prevent anything like a genuine union of the conquerors and 
the conquered. 

Nature seems to have intended that France should play a 
leading part in European affairs. The geographical unity of the 
Physical country is obvious. Mountains and seas form its 
France permanent boundaries, except on the northeast, 

where the frontier is not well defined. The western coast of 
France opens on the Atlantic, now the greatest highway of 
the world’s commerce, while on the southeast France touches 
the Mediterranean, the home of classical civilization. This 
intermediate position between two seas helps us to understand 
why French history should form, as it were, a connecting link 
between ancient and modern times. 

But the greatness of France has been due, in addition, to the 
qualities of the French people. Many racial elements have con- 
Racial tributed to the population. The blood of prehis- 

France toric men, whose monuments and grave mounds 

are scattered over the land, still flows in the veins of Frenchmen. 
At the opening of historic times France was chiefly occupied 
by the Gauls, whom Julius Caesar found there and subdued. 
The Gauls, a Celtic-speaking people, formed in later ages the 
main stock of the French nation, but their language gave place 
to Latin after the Roman conquest. In the course of five 
hundred years the Gauls were so thoroughly Romanized that 
they may be best described as Gallo-Romans. The Germans 
and Northmen afterward added a Teutonic element to the 
population, as well as some Teutonic laws and customs. 

France, again, became a great nation because of the greatness 
of her rulers. The old line of French kings, descended from 
Unification Charlemagne, died out in the tenth century, and a 
of France nobleman named Hugh Capet then founded a new 

dynasty. His accession took place in 987. The Capetian 
. dynasty was long-lived, and for more than three centuries son 


National States 


263 

followed father on the throne without a break in the succession. 
During this time the French sovereigns worked steadily to unite 
the feudal states of medieval France into a real nation under a 
common government. Their success in this task made them, 
at the close of the Middle Ages,, the strongest monarchs in 
western Europe. 

Spain in historic times was conquered by the Carthaginians, 
who left few traces of their occupation; by the Romans, who 
thoroughly Romanized the country; by the Visi- Unification 
* goths, who founded a Teutonic kingdom; and of s P ain 
lastly by the Moors, 1 who introduced Arabian culture and the 
faith of Islam. The Moors never wholly overran a fringe of moun¬ 
tain territory in the extreme north of the peninsula. Here arose 
several Christian states, including Leon, Castile, Navarre, and 
Aragon. These steadily enlarged their boundaries, and by the 
close of the thirteenth century Moorish Spain was reduced to 
the kingdom of Granada. Meanwhile, the separate states 
were coming, together, and the marriage of Ferdinand of 
Aragon to Isabella of Castile completed the process. Ferdi¬ 
nand and Isabella captured Granada in 1492, thus ending Moor¬ 
ish rule in Spain. No effort was made by the Ottoman Turks, 
who shortly before had taken Constantinople (§ 79), to defend 
this last stronghold of Islam in the West. 

The complete establishment of feudalism in any country 
meant, as has been shown (§ 74), its division into numerous 
small communities, each with an army, law court, Feudalism 
and treasury. A king often became little more and r °y alt y 
than a figurehead, equaled or perhaps surpassed in power by 
some of his own vassals. The sovereigns, who saw themselves 
thus stripped of all but the semblance of authority, were 
naturally anti-feudal, and during the later Middle Ages, they 
began to get the upper hand of their nobles. They formed 
permanent armies by insisting that all military service should 
be rendered to themselves and not to the feudal lords. They 
put down private warfare between the nobles and took over 

1 The name Moor (derived from the Roman province of Mauretania) is applied 
to the Arab and Berber peoples who occupied North Africa and Spain. 


264 


The Middle Ages 


the administration of justice. They developed a revenue 
system, with the taxes collected by royal officers and deposited 
in the royal treasury. The sovereigns thus succeeded in 
creating a unified , centralized government, which all their 
subjects feared, respected, and obeyed. 

The triumph of royalty over 
feudalism was in many ways a 
The new gain for civilization, 
monarchies Feudalism, though 
better than no government at 
all, did not meet the needs of 
a progressive society. Only 
strong-handed kings could keep 
the peace, punish crime, and 
foster industry and trade. The 
kings, of course, were generally 
despotic, repressing not only the 
privileges of the nobles but also 
popular liberties. Despotism 
never became so pronounced in 
Coronation Chair, Westminster England as on the Continent, 
Abbey because the English people 

Every English ruler since Edward I has during the Middle AgeS devel- 
been crowned in this oak chair. Under the 0 _ 

seat is the “Stone of Scone,” said to have Oped a Parhament to rep- 
been once used by the patriarch Jacob. Ed- resent th and the Com _ 

ward I brought it to London in 1291 as a 7 

token of the subjection of Scotland. mon Law to protect them from 

royal oppression. They also 
compelled various sovereigns to issue charters, especially 
Magna Carta, which was secured from King John in 1215. 
This famous document, among other things, provided that 
henceforth no one might be arrested, imprisoned, or punished 
in any way, except after a trial by his equals and in accordance 
with the law of the land. Magna Carta contained the germ 
of legal principles upon which Englishmen ever afterward 
relied for protection against their rulers. 

The new monarchies, by breaking down feudalism, pro¬ 
moted the growth of national or patriotic sentiments. Loyalty 








National States 


265 


to the sovereign and to the state which he represented grad¬ 
ually replaced allegiance to the feudal lord. Nobles, clergy, city 
folk, and peasants began to think of themselves The new 
as one people and to have for their “fatherland” nationalism 
the warmest feelings of patriotic devotion. This new nation¬ 
alism was especially well developed in England, France, and 
Spain at the close of the Middle Ages. 

Studies 

1. What happened in 622? in 732? in 800? in 962? in 1054? in 1066? 
in 1095? in 1215? and in 1453? 2. On an outline map indicate the 

boundaries of Charlemagne’s empire, distinguishing his hereditary posses¬ 
sions from those which he acquired by conquest. 3. Compare the invasions 
of the Northmen with those of the Germans as to (a) causes, ( b ) area 
covered, and ( c ) results. 4. Show how the voyages of the Northmen 
greatly increased geographical knowledge. 5. Why has feudalism been 
called “confusion roughly organized”? 6. “The real heirs of Charle¬ 
magne were from the first neither the kings of France nor those of Italy 
or Germany, but the feudal lords.” Comment on this statement. 
7. Contrast feudalism as a political system with (a) the classical city-state, 
( b ) the Roman Empire, and (c) modern national states. 8. Look up the 
origin of the words homage, castle, dungeon, and chivalry. 9. Explain the 
terms “Greek Empire,” “Byzantine Empire,” and “Roman Empire in the 
East.” 10. “The Byzantines were the teachers of the Slavs as the Romans 
were of the Germans.” Comment on this statement. n. On an outline 
map indicate the Arabian Empire at its greatest extent, together with 
ten important cities. 12. What resemblances may be traced between 
Islam on the one side and Judaism and Christianity on the other side? 
13. Show that Islam was an heir to the Graeco-Oriental civilization of antiq¬ 
uity. 14. “ From the eighth to the twelfth century the world knew but 
two civilizations, that of Byzantium and that of the Arabs.” Comment 
on this statement. 15. Trace on the map (between pages 268-269) 
the religious situation in Europe on the eve of the crusades. 16. Why 
were the invasions of the Mongols and Ottoman Turks more destructive to 
civilization than those of the Germans, the Arabs, and the Northmen? 
17. What parts of Asia were not included in the Mongol Empire at its 
greatest extent (map facing page 256)? 18. Distinguish between a 

nation, a government, and a state. 19. Are unity of race, a common lan¬ 
guage, a common religion, and geographical unity of themselves sufficient 
to make a nation? May a nation arise where these bonds are lacking? 
20. “ Good government in the Middle Ages was only another name for a 
public-spirited and powerful monarchy.” Comment on this statement. 


CHAPTER X 


MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 
81 . The Church 


The most important civilizing influence in western Europe 
during the Middle Ages was the Roman Church. The Church 
performed a double task. On the one hand, it gave 

The Church \ . .. . . . , , , 

and medie- the people religious instruction and watched over 

val dviliza- t ^ ie ^ r mora ^ s j on ot her hand, it took an impor¬ 
tant part in secular affairs. Priests and monks 
were almost the only persons of education; consequently, they 
controlled the schools, wrote the books, framed the laws, acted 
as royal ministers, and served as members of the Parliament or 
other national assembly. The Church thus directed the higher 
life of a medieval community. 

The Church held spiritual sway throughout western Europe. 
Territorial Italy and Sicily, the larger part of Spain, France, 
extent of the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Bohemia, 
the Church Hungary, Poland, the British Isles, Denmark, 
Sweden, Norway, and Iceland yielded obedience to the pope of 
Rome. 

Membership in the Church was not a matter of free choice. 
All people, except Jews, were required to belong to it. A 
The Church person joined the Church by baptism, a rite usually 
as universal performed in infancy, and remained in it as long as 
he lived. Every one was expected to accept the doctrines and 


1 Webster, Readings in Early European History, chapter xxvi, “The Benedictine 
Rule” ; chapter xxvii, “The Reestablishment of Christianity in Britain” ; chapter 
xxviii, “St. Boniface, the Apostle to the Germans” ; chapter xxxiii, “Monastic Life 
in the Twelfth Century ”; chapter xxxiv, “ St. Francis and the Franciscans ” ; chap¬ 
ter xl, “Medieval Tales”; chapter xli, “Three Medieval Epics.” 

266 


The Church 


267 


practices of the Church, and any one attacking its authority 
was liable to punishment as a heretic. 

The existence of one Church in the western world furnished a 
bond of union between European peoples. The Church took 
no heed of political boundaries, for men of all The Church 
nationalities entered the ranks of the priesthood as inter- 
and joined the monastic orders. Priests and monks national 
were subjects of no country, but were “citizens of heaven,” as 
they sometimes called themselves. Even differences of language 
counted for little in the 
Church, since Latin was the 
universal speech of the edu¬ 
cated classes. One must 
think, then, of the Church 
as a great international state, 
in form a monarchy, pre¬ 
sided over by the pope, and 
with its capital at Rome. 

As soon as Christianity 

had triumphed in the Roman 

Empire, thus 
, . . Worship 

becoming the 

religion of the rich and pow¬ 
erful as well as of the poor From a window of the cathedra i of Bourges, a 

. city in central France. Shows a pipe organ and 

and lowly, more attention chimes, 
was devoted to the conduct 

of worship. Magnificent church buildings were often erected. 
Church interiors were adorned with paintings, mosaic pictures, 
images of saints, and the figure of the cross. Lighted candles on 
the altars and the burning of fragrant incense lent an additional 
impressiveness to worship. Beautiful prayers and hymns were 
composed. Organs and church bells also came into use during 
the Middle Ages. 

Many cases, which to-day would be decided according to the 
civil or criminal law of the State, in the Middle Ecclesiasti- 
Ages came before ecclesiastical courts. Since mar- cal courts 
riage was considered a sacrament, the Church took upon itself 



Religious Music 















268 


Medieval Civilization 


to decide what marriages were lawful. It forbade the union 
of first cousins, of second cousins, and of godparents and god¬ 
children. It refused to sanction divorce, for whatever cause, if 
both parties at the time of marriage had been baptized Chris¬ 
tians. The Church dealt with inheritance under wills, for a 
man could not make a legal will until he had confessed, and 
confession formed part of the sacrament of penance. All con¬ 
tracts made binding by oaths came under Church jurisdiction, 
because an oath was an appeal to God. The Church tried those 

who were charged with any 
sin against religion, includ¬ 
ing heresy, blasphemy, the 
taking of interest (usury), 
and the practice of witch¬ 
craft. Widows, orphans, and 
the families of pilgrims and 
crusaders also enjoyed the 
special protection of the 
Church. 

Disobedience to the regu¬ 
lations of the Church might 
be followed by excommuni¬ 
cation. This was a coercive 
measure which cut off the offender from Christian fellow¬ 
ship. He could neither attend religious services nor enjoy 
Excommu- the sacraments so necessary to salvation. If he 
mcation di e d excommunicate, his body could not be buried 
in consecrated ground. By the law of the State he lost all 
civil rights and forfeited all his property. No one might speak 
to him, feed him, or shelter him. Such a terrible penalty, it 
is well to point out, was usually imposed only after the sinner 
had received a fair trial and had spurned all entreaties to 
repent. 

We may now consider the attitude of the Church toward the 
The Church social and economic problems of the Middle Ages, 
and warfare j n re g ar d to private warfare, the prevalence of 
which formed one of the greatest evils of the time, the Church, 



Bishop Consecrating a Bell 

From a fifteenth-century manuscript in the 
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. 



















GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY 
FROM THE FIFTH TO THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 

Extent of Christianity about 400 A. D. I ~l Mohammedanism is 

Area Christianized 400-800 A. D. shown by white bands 

Area Christianized 800-1100 A. D. Division between the 

Area Christianized 1100-1300 A. D. x Greek and Roman Churches 


Boundaries (in 622 A.D.)of the patriarchates of Rome, Constantinople, 
Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria 


0 ° 


10 


Lo 



















































































The Church 


269 


in general, cast its influence on the side of peace. It forbade 
attacks on all defenseless people, including priests, monks, 
pilgrims, merchants, peasants, and women. It also established 
a “Truce of God,” which required all men to cease fighting from 
Wednesday evening to Monday morning of each week, in Lent, 
and on various holy days. The truce would have given western 
Europe peace for about two-thirds of the year, but it was never 
strictly observed, except in limited areas. The feudal lords 
could not be deterred from warring with one another, even 
though they were threatened with the torments of hell. The 
Church did not carry its pacific policy so far as to condemn war¬ 
fare against heretics and infidels. Christians believed it a 
religious duty to exterminate these enemies of God. 

The Church was distinguished for charitable work. It dis¬ 
tributed large sums to the needy. It also multiplied hospitals, 
orphanages, and asylums. Medieval charity, how- The Church 
ever, was very often injudicious. The problem of and charity 
removing the causes of poverty seems never to have been 
raised; and the indiscriminate giving multiplied, rather than 
reduced, the number of beggars. 

Neither slavery nor serfdom, into which slavery gradually 
passed, was ever pronounced unlawful by pope or Church coun¬ 
cil. The Church condemned slavery only when it The Church 
was the servitude of a Christian in bondage to and slavery 
a Jew or an infidel. Abbots, bishops, and popes and serfdom 
possessed slaves and serfs. The serfs of some wealthy monas¬ 
teries were counted by thousands. The Church, nevertheless, 
encouraged the freeing of bondmen and always preached the 
duty of kindness and forbearance toward them. 

The Church also helped to promote the cause of human free¬ 
dom by insisting on the natural equality of all men in the sight 
of God. “The Creator,” wrote one of the popes, Democracy 
“distributes his gifts without regard to social of the Church 
classes. In his eyes there are neither nobles nor serfs.” The 
Church gave practical expression to this attitude by opening 
the priesthood and monastic orders to every one, whether high¬ 
born or low-born, whether rich or poor. 


270 


Medieval Civilization 


82. Priests, Monks, and Friars 

There were two divisions of the clergy: priests, who led active 
lives in the world; and monks, who passed their days in seclusion 
behind monastery walls. An account of the clergy naturally 



Abbey of Saint-Germain des Pres, Paris 


This celebrated monastery was founded in the sixth century. Of the original buildings 
only the Abbey church remains. The illustration shows the monastery as it was in 1361, 
with walls, towers, drawbridge, and moat. Adjoining the church were the cloister, the refec¬ 
tory, and the dormitory. 

begins with the parish priest, who had charge of a parish, the 
smallest division of Christendom. He was the 
only Church officer who came continually into 
touch with the common people. He baptized, married, and 
buried his parishioners. He celebrated mass at least once a 
week, heard confessions, and imposed penance. He watched over 
all their deeds on earth and prepared them for the life to come. 













Priests, Monks, and Friars 


271 


A group of parishes formed a diocese, over which a bishop 
presided. It was his business to look after the property belong¬ 
ing to the diocese, to hold the ecclesiastical courts, Bishops and 
to visit the parish priests, and to see that they did archbishops 
their duty. Above the bishop stood the archbishop. In 
England, for example, there were two archbishops, one residing 
at York and the other at Canterbury. The latter, as “Pri¬ 
mate of All England,” was the highest ecclesiastical dignitary in 
the country. A church which contained the official throne 1 of 
a bishop or archbishop was called a cathedral. It was ordi¬ 
narily the largest and most magnificent church in the diocese. 

The earlier monks were hermits. They devoted themselves, 
as they believed, to the service of God, by retiring to the desert 
for prayer, meditation, and bodily mortification. ^ ^ 

The mere human need for social intercourse grad¬ 
ually brought the hermits together, at first in small groups and 
then in larger communities, or monasteries. The next step was 
to give the scattered monasteries a common organization and 
government. Those in western Christendom gradually adopted 
the regulations which St. Benedict (about 529) drew up for the 
guidance of his monastery at Monte Cassino in Italy. 

The monks obeying the Benedictine Rule formed a corpora¬ 
tion, presided over by an abbot, 2 who held office for life. Every 
candidate for admission took the vow of obedience The Bene- 
to the abbot. Any man, rich or poor, noble or dictine Rule 
peasant, might enter the monastery after a year’s probation; 
having once joined, however, he must remain a monk for the 
rest of his days. The monks lived under strict discipline. 
They could not own any property; they could not go beyond 
the monastery walls without the abbot’s consent; and they 
followed a regular round of worship, reading from the Bible, 
private prayer, and meditation. The monks also worked hard 
with their hands, doing the necessary washing and cooking for the 
monastery, raising the necessary supplies of vegetables and grain, 
and performing all the other tasks required to maintain a large 

1 Latin cathedra. 

2 From a Syrian word, abba, meaning “father.” 


272 


Medieval Civilization 


establishment. This emphasis on labor as a religious duty was 
a characteristic feature of western monasticism. 

The civilizing influence of the Benedictine monks during the 
early Middle Ages can scarcely be over-emphasized. A monas- 
The monks tery was often at once a model farm, an inn, a hos- 
as civilizers pital, a school, and a library. The monks, by the 
careful cultivation of their lands, set an example of good farming 
wherever they settled. They entertained pilgrims and travelers 

at a period when west¬ 
ern Europe was almost 
without inns. They per¬ 
formed many works of 
charity, feeding the hun¬ 
gry, healing the sick who 
were brought to their 
doors, and distributing their 
medicines freely to those 
who needed them. They 
trained in their schools 
boys who intended to enter 
the ranks of the clergy. 
The monks, too, were the 
only scholars of the age. 
By copying the manu¬ 
scripts of classical au¬ 
thors, they preserved val¬ 
uable books that would otherwise have been lost. By keeping 
records of the most striking events of their time, they acted 
as chroniclers of medieval history. The monks also served as 
missionaries among the heathen. 

The Benedictine system had its limitations. The monks 

lived apart from their fellow-men and sought chiefly the salva- 

,. tion of their own souls. A new conception of the 

Thefnars .. . , 

religious life arose early m the thirteenth century, 

with the coming of the friars. 1 Their aim was social service. 

They devoted themselves to the salvation of others. The 

1 Latin frater, “brother.” 



A Monk Copyist 

From a manuscript in the British Museum, London. 














































Priests, Monks, and Friars 


2 73 

foundation of the orders of friars was the work of two men, 
St. Francis in Italy and St. Dominic in Spain. The Franciscans 
and Dominicans resembled each other in many ways. They 
went on foot from place to place, and wore coarse robes tied 
round the waist with a rope. They possessed no property, but 



lived on the alms of the charitable. They were also preachers, 
who spoke to the people, not in Latin, but in the common 
language of each country which they visited. The Franciscans 
worked especially in the slums of the cities; the Dominicans 
addressed themselves rather to educated people and the upper 
classes. As time went on, both orders relaxed the rule of 





















274 


Medieval Civilization 


poverty and became very wealthy. They still survive, scat¬ 
tered all over the world and engaged chiefly in teaching and 
missionary activity. 

83 . The Papacy 

The spiritual supremacy which the pope acquired over western 
Christians was due to several causes. In the first place, the 
Rise of the Roman Church seemed to them exceptionally 
Papacy sacred, for tradition declared that it had been 

founded by St. Peter, who served as its first bishop. In the 
second place, they regarded the Roman Church as a “mother- 
church,” which had planted so many offshoots in Gaul and Spain 
and afterward in Germany and Britain. In the third place, the 
fact that the Roman Church had always stood firmly by the 
Creed of Nicaea (§ 68) also commended it to Christians in the 
West. 

The Roman Church enjoyed practical independence of the 
imperial government alter the removal of the capital to Con- 
Growth of stantinople. When the German invasions began, 
the Papacy western Christians turned more and more for sup¬ 
port to the powerful bishop of Rome. One of the popes inter¬ 
vened to save Rome from destruction when the Vandals sacked 
the city, and another pope did much to prevent the Lombards 
from conquering all Italy. During the eighth century the alli¬ 
ance of the popes and the Franks (§ 72) gave to the Papacy a 
powerful and generous protector beyond the Alps'. 

The pope was the supreme lawgiver of the Church. His 
decrees might not be set aside by any other person. He made 
Power Of new laws in the form of “bulls” 1 and by his “dis- 

the Papacy pensations” could in particular cases set aside old 
laws, such as those forbidding cousins to marry or monks to 
obtain release from their vows. The pope was also the supreme 
judge of the Church, for all appeals from the lower ecclesiastical 
courts came before him for decision. Finally, the pope was the 
supreme administrator of the Church. He confirmed the elec- 

1 So called from the lead seal (Latin bulla ) attached to papal documents. 


The Papacy 


275 


tion of both bishops and archbishops, deposed them, when 
necessary, or transferred them from one diocese to another. 
The pope also exercised control over the monastic orders and 
called general councils of the Church. 

For assistance in government the pope made use of the car¬ 
dinals, 1 who formed a board, or “college.” They were chosen 
at first only from the clergy of Rome and the 
vicinity, but m course of time the pope opened the 
cardinalate to prominent churchmen in all countries. The 
number of cardinals is now fixed at seventy. They received in 
the eleventh century the right of choosing a new pope. 

The pope was a temporal sovereign, ruling over Rome and the 
States of the Church. These possessions included during the 
Middle Ages the greater part of central Italy, states of 
The pope did not lose them altogether until the the Church 
formation of the present Italian kingdom, in the second half 
of the nineteenth century. 

To support the business of the Papacy and to maintain the 
splendor of the papal court required a large annual income. This 
came partly from the States of the Church, partly income of 
from the gifts of the faithful, and partly from the the Pa P ac y 
payments made by the abbots, bishops, and archbishops when 
the pope confirmed their election to office. Another source 
of revenue consisted of “Peter’s Pence,” a tax of a penny on 
each hearth. It was collected every year in England and in 
some Continental countries until the time of the Reformation. 
The modern “Peter’s Pence” is a voluntary contribution made 
by Roman Catholics in all countries. 

Rome, the Eternal City, from which in ancient times so 
much of the world had been ruled, was the capital of the Papacy. 
Few traces now remain of the medieval city. Old The capital 
St. Peter’s Church, where Charlemagne was of the Pa P ac y 
crowned emperor, gave way in the sixteenth century to the 
world-famous structure that now occupies its site. The Lateran 
Palace, which for more than a thousand years served as the 
residence of the popes, has also disappeared, its place being 

1 Latin cardinalis, “principal.” 


276 


Medieval Civilization 


taken by a new and smaller building. The popes now live in 
the splendid palace of the Vatican, adjoining St. Peter’s. 



84 . Country Life 

Classical civilization always had its home in the city. Nothing 
marks more strongly the backwardness of the early Middle 
Decline of Ages than the absence of the flourishing cities 
urban life which had filled western Europe under the Roman 

Empire (§ 53). The barbarian invasions led to a gradual decay 
of manufacturing and commerce and hence of the cities in 


A Windmill 

From a fourteenth-century manuscript in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. 

which those activities centered. As urban life declined, the 
mass of the population came to live more and more in isolated 
rural communities. This was the great economic feature of the 
early Middle Ages. 

An estate in land, when owned by a lord and occupied by 
dependent peasants, was called a manor. 1 It naturally varied in 
Th size according to the wealth of its lord. In England 

perhaps six hundred acres formed an average estate. 
Every noble had at least one manor; great nobles might have 
several manors, usually scattered throughout the country; 
and even the king depended upon his many manors for the food 


1 From the Old French manoir, “mansion” (Latin manere, “to dwell”). 









Country Life 


277 


Common cul¬ 
tivation of 
the arable 
land 


supply of the court. England, during the period following the 
Norman Conquest, contained more than nine thousand of these 
manorial estates. 

The lord reserved for his own use a part of the arable land of 
the manor. This was his “demesne,” or domain. The rest of 
the land he allotted to the peasants who were his 
tenants. They cultivated their holdings in com¬ 
mon, according to the “open-field” system. A 
farmer, instead of having his land in one compact 
mass, had it split up into a large number of small strips (usually 
an acre or a half-acre) scattered over the manor, and separated, 
not by fences or hedges, but by banks of unplowed turf. The 
appearance of a manor, when under cultivation, has been likened 
to a vast checkerboard or a patchwork quilt. The reason for 
the intermixture of strips seems to have been to make sure that 
each farmer had a portion both of the good land and of the bad. 

Farmers did not know how to enrich the soil by the use of 
fertilizers and a proper rotation of crops. Consequently, they 
divided all the arable land into three parts, one of Farming 
which was sown with wheat or rye, and another methods 
with oats or barley, while the third was allowed to lie fallow 
(uncultivated) for a year, so that it might recover its fertility. 
Eight or nine bushels of grain represented the average yield of 
an acre. Farm animals were small, for scientific breeding had 
not yet begun. Farm implements, also, were few and clumsy. 
It took five men a day to reap and bind the harvest of two acres. 

Besides his holding of arable land, which in England averaged 
about thirty acres, each peasant had certain rights over the 
non-arable land of the manor. He could cut a common use 
limited amount of hay from the meadow. He could of the non¬ 
turn so many farm animals — cattle, geese, swine— ara bie land 
on the waste. He also enjoyed the privilege of taking so much 
wood from the forest for fuel and building purposes. A peasant’s 
holding, which also included a house in the village, thus formed 
a complete outfit. 

The peasants on a manor lived close together in one or more 
villages. Their small, thatch-roofed, and one-roomed houses 


278 


Medieval Civilization 


were grouped about an open space (the “green”), or on both 
sides of a single, narrow street. The only important buildings 
Description were the parish church, the parsonage, a mill, if a 
of a village stream ran through the manor, and possibly a black¬ 
smith’s shop. The population of one of these communities 
often did not exceed one hundred souls. 



Plan of Hitchin Manor, Hertfordshire 

Lord’s demesne, diagonal lines. Meadow and pasture lands, dotted areas. Normal 
holding of a peasant, black strips. 


A village in the Middle Ages had a regular staff of officials. 
First came the headman or reeve, who represented the peasants 
Village in their dealings with the lord of the manor. Next 

officials came the constable or beadle, whose duty it was to 

carry messages around the village, summon the inhabitants to 
meetings, and enforce the orders of the reeve. Then there 
were the pound-keeper, who seized straying animals; the watch¬ 
man, who guarded the flocks at night; and the village carpenter, 
blacksmith, and miller. These officials, in return for their ser- 












Farm Work in the Fourteenth Century 

Plowing. Harrowing. Cutting Weeds. Reaping. 


279 





















































28 o 


Medieval Civilization 


vices, received an allowance of land, which the villagers culti¬ 
vated for them. 

The ‘most striking feature of a medieval village was its self- 
sufficiency. The inhabitants tried to produce at home every- 
A village as thing they required, in order to avoid the uncer- 
seif-sufficing tainty and expense of trade. The land gave them 
their food; the forest provided them with wood for houses and 
furniture. They made their own clothes of flax, wool, and 
leather. Their meal and flour were ground at the village mill, 
and at the village smithy their farm implements were manufac¬ 
tured. The chief articles which needed to be brought from 
some distant market included salt, used to salt down farm 
animals killed in autumn, iron for various tools, and millstones. 
Cattle, horses, and surplus grain also formed common objects 
of exchange between manors. 

Life in a medieval village was rude and rough. The peasants 
labored from sunrise to sunset, ate coarse fare, lived in huts, and 
Condition of suffered from frequent pestilences. If their lord 
the peasants happened to be a quarrelsome man, given to fight¬ 
ing with his neighbors, they might see their land ravaged, their 
cattle driven off, and their village burned, and might them¬ 
selves be slain. If, however, the peasants had a just and gen¬ 
erous lord, they probably led a fairly comfortable existence. 
They had an abundance of food, unless crops failed. They 
shared a common life in the work of the fields, in the sports of 
the village green, and in the services of the parish church. 
They enjoyed many holidays; it has been estimated that, be¬ 
sides Sundays, about eight weeks in every year were free from 
work. Festivities at Christmas, Easter, and May Day, at the 
end of ploughing and the completion of harvest, also relieved 
the monotony of labor. 


85 . Serfdom 

A medieval village usually contained several classes of labor¬ 
ers. There might be a number of freemen, who paid a fixed 
rent, either in money or produce, for the use of their land. 
A few slaves might also be found in the lord’s household or at 


Serfdom 


281 


work on his demesne. Slavery, however, gradually died out in 
western Europe Freemen> 
during the early slaves, and 
Middle Ages. serfs 
Most of the peasants were 
serfs. 

A slave belonged to his mas¬ 
ter; he was bought and sold 
like other prop- Nature of 
erty. A serf had serfdom 
a higher position, for he could 
not be sold apart from the land 
nor could his holding be taken 
from him. He was fixed to 
the soil. On the other hand, 
a serf ranked lower than a 
freeman, because he could not 
change his abode, or marry 
outside the manor, or bequeath his goods, without the permis¬ 
sion of his lord. 

The serf did not receive his land as 
a gift; for the use of it he owed cer¬ 
tain duties to his master, obligations 
These took chiefly the of the serf 
form of personal services. He must 
labor on the lord’s demesne for two or 
three days each week, and at specially 
busy seasons, such as ploughing and 
harvesting, he must do extra work. 
The lord usually demanded at least 
half his time. The serf had also to 
make certain payments, either in 
money or more often in grain, honey, 
eggs, or other produce. When he 
ground the wheat or pressed the grapes 
which grew on his land, he must use the lord’s mill or the 
lord’s wine-press, and pay the customary charge. 



Serf Warming his 
Hands 

After a medieval manuscript. 







































282 


Medieval Civilization 


Serfdom developed during the later centuries of the Roman 
Empire and in the early Middle Ages. Many serfs seem to have 
Origin of been descendants of the tenants, both free and 
serfdom servile, who had worked the great Roman estates 
in western Europe (§ 53). The serf class was also recruited 
from the ranks of free Germans, whom the disturbed conditions 
of the time induced to seek the protection of a lord. 



A Sermon at St. Paul’s Cross, London, in Plague Time 


Serfdom began to decline after the opening of the thirteenth 
century, as the result of the revival of trade and industry. More 
Decline of money thus came into circulation, so that the lord 
serfdom was now a bi e t 0 acce pt money payments from his 
serfs, in lieu of their personal services. Both parties gained by 
such an arrangement, the lord because hired labor was more 
efficient than forced labor on his domain, the serf because he 
could now devote hiniself entirely to the cultivation of his own 
holding. In this way the manorial lord developed into the 
modern landlord, the proprietor of the soil, while his former 
serfs became free tenant farmers who paid a fixed sum (rent) 
for the land they tilled. 

The decline of serfdom was hastened, strangely enough, as 
the result of perhaps the most terrible calamity that has ever 











































City Life 


283 


afflicted mankind. About the middle of the fourteenth cen¬ 
tury a pestilence of Asiatic origin, now known to have been the 
bubonic plague, reached the West. The Black The Black 
Death, so called because among its symptoms were Death 
dark patches all over the body, moved steadily across Europe. 
The way for its ravages had been prepared by the unhealthful 
conditions of ventilation and drainage in villages and towns. 
After attacking Greece, Sicily, Italy, Spain, France, and Ger¬ 
many, the plague entered England in 1349, and within less than 
two years swept away probably half the population. 

, The pestilence in England, as in other countries, caused a great 
scarcity of labor. Crops rotted in the ground, for want of 
hands to bring in the harvest, while sheep and cat- Effects of the 
tie, with no one to care for them, strayed through Black Death 
the deserted fields. The free peasants who survived demanded 
and received higher wages. Even the serfs, whose labor was now 
more valued, found themselves in a better position. The lord 
of a manor, in order to keep his laborers, would often allow them 
to substitute money payments for personal services. When the 
serfs secured no concessions, they frequently took to flight and 
hired themselves to the highest bidder. All this went on in 
spite of numerous statutes passed by Parliament ordering work¬ 
men to accept the old rate of wages and forbidding them to 
migrate in search of better employment. 

The decline of serfdom continued throughout the fourteenth 
and fifteenth centuries. It had virtually disappeared in Italy, 
in many parts of France and Germany, and in Extinction 
England by the dawn of modern times. Some of serfdom 
European countries, however, retained serfdom much longer. 
Prussian, Austrian, and Russian serfs did not secure freedom 
until the nineteenth century. 

86 . City Life 

The great economic feature of the later Middle Ages was the 
zivic revival. The development of industry and The civic 
commerce led to the increase of wealth, the growth revival 
of markets, and the substitution of money payments for 


284 


Medieval Civilization 


those in produce or services. Flourishing cities arose, as in the 
days of the Roman Empire, freed themselves from the control 
of the nobles, and became the homes of liberty and democracy. 



A Medieval Walled Town (Leicester) in Relation to Its Fields 


A number of medieval cities stood on the sites, and even 
within the walls, of Roman municipalities. Particularly in 
Cities of Italy, southern France, and Spain, and also in 
Roman origin the Rhine and Danube regions, it seems that some 
ancient cities had never been entirely destroyed during the 
barbarian invasions. They preserved their Roman names, their 
streets, aqueducts, amphitheaters, and churches, and possibly 
vestiges of their Roman institutions. Among them were such 









City Life 285 

important centers as Milan, Florence, Venice, Genoa, Lyons, 
Marseilles, Paris, Vienna, Cologne, London, and York. 

Many medieval cities were new foundations. Some began as 
small communities which increased in size because of exceptional 
advantages of situation. A place where a river origin of 
could be forded, where two roads met, or where other cities 
a good harbor existed, would naturally become the resort of 
traders. Some, again, started as fortresses, behind whose ram- 



Walls of Carcassonne 


The fortifications of Carcassonne, an ancient city of southwestern France, are probably 
unique in Europe for completeness and strength. They consist of a double line of ram¬ 
parts, protected by towers and pierced by only two gates. A part of the fortifications is 
attributed to the Visigoths in the sixth century; the remainder, including the castle, was 
raised during the Middle Ages (eleventh to thirteenth centuries). 


parts the peasants took refuge when danger threatened. A 
third group of cities developed from villages on the manors. A 
thriving settlement was pretty sure to spring up near a monas¬ 
tery or castle, which offered both protection and employment to 
the common people. 

The city at first formed part of the feudal system. It arose 
upon the territory of a lord and owed obedience to him. The 
citizens ranked not much higher than serfs, though The city and 
they were traders and artisans instead of farmers, feudalism 
They enjoyed no political rights, for their lord collected the 





286 


Medieval Civilization 


taxes, appointed officials, kept order, and punished offenders. 
In short, the city was not free. As its inhabitants became more 
numerous and wealthy, they refused to submit to oppression. 
Sometimes they won their freedom by hard fighting; more often 
they purchased it, perhaps from some noble who needed money 
to go on a crusade. In France, England, and Spain, where the 
royal power was strong, the cities only obtained relief from 
their feudal burdens. In Germany and Italy, on the other 

hand, the weakness 
of the central gov¬ 
ernment permitted 
many cities to secure 
complete independ¬ 
ence. One of them 
survives to this day 
as the little Italian 
republic of San Ma¬ 
rino, and three others 
— Hamburg, Bre¬ 
men, and Liibeck — 
entered the German 
Empire in the nine¬ 
teenth century as 
separate common¬ 
wealths. 

The free city had 
no room for either slaves or serfs. All servile conditions 
ceased inside its walls. The rule prevailed that any one 
Rise of the who had lived in a city for the term of a year 
middle class anc j a d a y cou id no longer be claimed by a lord 
as his serf. This rule found expression in the famous saying, 
“Town air renders free.” The freedom of the cities naturally 
attracted many immigrants to them. There came into existence 
a middle class of city people — merchants, artisans, and profes¬ 
sional men — between clergy and nobles on the one side and 
peasants on the other side. The kings of England, France, and 
some other European countries soon began to summon repre- 



Title-page of a tract published in 1616. It was part 
of the duties of a bellman, or night-watchman, to call out 
the hours, the state of the weather, and other information 
as he passed by. 















































City Life 


287 


sentativesof this middle class to sit in assemblies (parliaments), 
as the Third Estate, along with the clergy and the nobles, who 
formed the first two estates of the realm. 

The visitor approaching a medieval city through miles of 
open fields saw it clear in the sunlight, unobscured by coal 
smoke. It looked like 
a fortress from with¬ 
out, with a city from 
walls, without 

towers, gateways, 
drawbridges, and 
moat. Beyond the 
fortifications he would 
see, huddled together 
against the sky, the 
spires of the churches 
and the cathedral, the 
roofs of the larger 
houses, and the dark, 
frowning mass of the 
castle. The general 
impression was one of 
wealth and strength 
and beauty. 

The visitor would 
not find things so at¬ 
tractive within the 
walls. The streets 
were narrow, crooked, 
and ill-paved, dark 
during the day because of the overhanging houses, and without 
illumination at night. There were no open spaces or a city from 
parks except a small market place. The whole within 
city was cramped by its walls, which shut out light, air,'and 
view, and prevented expansion into the neighboring country. 
Medieval London, for instance, covered an area of less than one 
square mile. 



Belfry of Bruges 

Bruges, the capital of West Flanders, contains many 
fine monuments of the Middle Ages. Among these is the 
belfry, which rises in the center of the facade of the market 
hall. It dates from the end of the thirteenth century. Its 
height is 352 feet. The belfry consists of three stories, 
the two lower ones square, and the upper one octagonal. 









288 


Medieval Civilization 


A city in the Middle Ages lacked sanitary arrangements. 
The only water supply came from polluted streams and wells. 
Unsanitary Sewers and sidewalks were quite unknown. People 
conditions piled up their refuse in the backyard or flung it 
into the street, to be devoured by the dogs and pigs which served 
as scavengers. The holes in the pavement collected all manner 
of filth, and the unpaved lanes, in wet weather, became quag¬ 
mires. We can understand why the townspeople wore over¬ 
shoes when they went out, and why even the saints in the 
pictures were represented wearing them. The living were 
crowded together in many-storied houses, airless and gloomy; 
the dead were buried close at hand in crowded churchyards. 
Such unsanitary conditions must have been responsible for 
much of the sickness that was prevalent. The high death 
rate could only be offset by a birth rate correspondingly high, 
and by the constant influx of country people. 

The inhabitants of the city took a just pride in their public 
buildings. The market place, where traders assembled, often 
Public contained a beautiful cross and sometimes a mar- 

buildings ket hall t 0 shelter goods from the weather. Not 
far away rose the city hall for the transaction of public 
business and the holding of civic feasts. The hall might be 
crowned by a high belfry with an alarm bell to summon the 
citizens to mass meetings. There were also handsome churches 
and abbeys and, if the city was the capital of a bishop’s diocese, 
an imposing cathedral. 

The small size of medieval cities — few included more than 
ten thousand inhabitants — simplified the problem of governing 
Municipal them. The leading merchants usually formed a 
government council presided over by a head magistrate, the 
burgomaster 1 or mayor, 2 who was assisted by aldermen. 3 
In some places the guilds chose the officials and managed civic 
affairs. These associations had many functions and held a 
most important place in city life. 

1 German bur germeister, from burg, “castle.” 

2 French maire, from Latin major, “greater.” 

3 Anglo-Saxon ealdorman (eald means “old”). 


Civic Industry 

87 . Civic Industry 


289 


Guilds 


The Anglo-Saxon word “guild,” which means “to pay,” 
came to be applied to a club or society whose members made 
contributions for some common purpose. This 
form of association is very old. Some of the guilds 
of imperial Rome had been established in the age of the kings, 
while not a few of those which flourish to-day in China and 
India were founded before the Christian era. Guilds existed in 
Continental Europe as early as the time of Charlemagne, but 
they did not become prominent until after the crusades. 

A guild of merchants grew up when those who bought and 
sold goods in any place united to protect their own interests. 
The membership included many artisans, as well Merchant 
as professional traders, for in medieval times a guilds 
man might sell in the front room of his shop the goods which 
he and his assistants made in the back rooms. 

The chief duty of a merchant guild was to preserve to its own 
members the monopoly of trade within a town. Strangers 
and non-guildsmen could not buy or sell there ex- Commercial 
cept under conditions imposed by the guild. They mon °P ol y 
must pay the town tolls, confine their dealings to guildsmen, and 
as a rule sell only at wholesale. They were forbidden to pur¬ 
chase wares which the townspeople wanted for themselves, or 
to set up shops for retail trade. They enjoyed more freedom at 
the numerous fairs, which were intended to attract outsiders. 

The traders and artisans engaged in a particular occupation 
also formed associations of their own. These were the craft 
guilds, composed of weavers, shoemakers, brew¬ 
ers, bakers, tailors, carpenters, blacksmiths, tan¬ 
ners, and other workmen. The names of the various occupa¬ 
tions came to be used as the surnames of those engaged in them, 
so that to-day we have such common family names as Smith, 
Cooper, Fuller, Potter, and Chandler. The number of craft 
guilds in an important city might be very large. London and 
Paris at one time each had more than one hundred, and Cologne 
in Germany had as many as eighty. The members of a particu- 


Craft guilds 


290 


Medieval Civilization 


lar guild usually lived in the same street or quarter of the city, 
not only for companionship, but also for better supervision of 
their labor. 

Just as the merchant guilds regulated toym trade, so the 
craft guilds had charge of town industry. No one could engage 
Industrial in any craft without becoming a member of the 

monopoly guild which controlled it and submitting to the 

guild regulations. A man’s hours of labor and the prices at 

which he sold his goods were 
fixed for him by the guild. 
He might not work elsewhere 
than in his shop, because of 
the difficulty of supervising 
him, nor might he work by 
artificial light, lest he turn out 
badly finished goods. Every¬ 
thing made by him was care¬ 
fully inspected to see if it con¬ 
tained shoddy materials or 
showed poor workmanship. 
Failure to meet the test meant 
a heavy fine or perhaps ex¬ 
pulsion from the guild. The 
industrial monopoly possessed 
by the craft guild thus gave 
some protection to both pro¬ 
ducer and consumer. 

Full membership in a guild 
Organization was reached only 
of craft guilds by degrees. A 

boy started as an apprentice, 
that is, a learner. He paid a sum of money to his master and 
agreed to serve him for a fixed period, usually seven years. The 
master, in turn, promised to provide the apprentice with food, 
lodging, and clothing, and to teach him all the secrets of the 
craft. The apprentice had to pass an examination by the guild, 
at the end of his term of service. If he was found fit, he then 



House of the Butchers’ Guild, 
Hildesheim, Germany 


Hildesheim, near Hanover, is perhaps the 
richest of all German towns in fine wooden¬ 
framed houses. The house of the Butchers’ 
Guild has been recently restored, with all its 
original coloring carefully reproduced. 












Civic Industry 


291 


became a journeyman and worked for daily wages. As soon 
as he had saved enough money, he might set up as a master in 
his own shop. A master was at once workman and employer, 
laborer and capitalist. 



The guilds had their charitable and religious aspects. Each 
one raised large benefit funds for the relief of members or their 
widows and orphans. Each one had its private Activities of 
altar in the cathedral, or often its own chapel, craft § uilds 
where masses were said for the repose of the souls of deceased 
members, and where on the day of its patron saint religious 
services were held. The guild was also a social organization, 









292 


Medieval Civilization 


with frequent meetings for a feast in its hall or in some inn. 
The guilds in some cities entertained the people with an annual 
play or procession. It is clear that the members of a craft 
guild had common interests and shared a common life. 



Spinning, Carding, and Weaving in the Middle Ages 

After a fifteenth-century manuscript. A queen presides at the loom, while one of her com¬ 
panions is busy with cards or combs, and the other with a distaff. 


88 . Civic Trade 

Nearly every town of any consequence held a weekly or semi¬ 
weekly market in the market place or in the churchyard. 
Markets Marketing often occurred on Sunday. Outsiders 
who brought cattle and produce for sale in the 
market were required to pay tolls, either to the town authorities 
or sometimes to a neighboring nobleman. These market dues 
survive in the octroi collected at the gates of many European 
cities. 

People in the Middle Ages did not believe in unrestricted com¬ 
petition. It was thought wrong for any one to purchase goods 

























Civic Trade 


293 


“Just price” 


outside of the regular market (“forestalling”) or to purchase 
them in larger quantities than necessary (‘ 1 engrossing ”). A man 
ought not to charge for a thing more than it was 
worth, or to buy a thing cheap and sell it dear. 

The idea prevailed that goods should be sold at their “just 
price,” which was not determined by supply and demand, but 
by an estimate of the cost of the materials and the labor that 
went into their manu¬ 
facture. Laws were 
often passed fixing this 
“just price,” but it was 
as difficult then as now 
to prevent the “corner¬ 
ing of the market” by 
shrewd and unscrupu¬ 
lous traders. 

Many towns also held 

fairs once or twice a 

year. The „ 

. . Fairs 

fairs often 

lasted for a month or 
more. They were es¬ 
pecially necessary in 
medieval Europe, be¬ 
cause merchants did 
not keep large quanti¬ 
ties or many kinds of 

goods on their shelves, nor could intending purchasers afford to 
travel far in search of what they wanted. A fair at an Eng¬ 
lish town, such as Stourbridge, Winchester, or St. Ives, might 
attract Venetians and Genoese with silk, pepper, and spices 
of the East, Flemings with fine cloths and linens, Spaniards 
with iron and wine, Norwegians with tar and pitch from 
their forests, and Baltic merchants with furs, amber, and 
salted fish. The fairs, by fostering commerce, helped to 

make the various European peoples better acquainted with one 
another. 



A Fair in the Fifteenth Century 

After a miniature representing the blessing of a fair. 






















294 


Medieval Civilization 


Commerce in western Europe had almost disappeared as a 
result of the barbarian invasions and the establishment of 
^ ^ f feudalism. Even the little commercial intercourse 
commerce in that survived met many obstacles. A merchant 
ivrddleA es w ^° went by land from country to country might 
expect to find bad roads, few bridges, and poor 
inns. Goods were transported on pack-horses instead of in 
wagons. Highway robbery was so common that travelers 
always carried arms and usually united in bands for better pro¬ 
tection. The feudal lords, often themselves not much more than 
highwaymen, demanded tolls at every bridge and ford and on 
every road. If the merchant proceeded by water, he must face, 
in addition to the ordinary hazards of wind and wave, the 
danger from the ill-lighted coasts and from attacks by pirates. 
No wonder commerce languished in the early Middle Ages and 
for a long time lay chiefly in the hands of Byzantines and Arabs. 

Even during the dark centuries that followed the break-up of 
the Roman Empire, some trade with the Orient had been carried 
Commercial on by the cities of Italy and southern France, 
revival after The crusades, which brought East and West face 
the crusades f ace ^ g rea tly increased this trade (§ 78). The 
Mediterranean lands first felt the stimulating effects of inter¬ 
course with the Orient, but before long the commercial revival 
extended to other parts of Europe. 

Before the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope the spices, 
drugs, incense, carpets, tapestries, porcelains, and gems of India, 
Asiatic trade China, and the East Indies reached the West by 
routes three main routes. 1 All had been used in ancient 

times. The central and most important route led up the 
Persian Gulf and Tigris River to Bagdad, from which city goods 
went by caravan to Antioch or Damascus. The southern route 
reached Cairo and Alexandria by way of the Red Sea and the 
Nile. By taking advantage of the monsoons, a merchant ship 
could make the voyage from India to Egypt in about three 
months. The northern route, entirely overland, led to ports on 
the Black Sea and thence to Constantinople. It traversed high 

1 See the map facing page 256. 


Civic Trade 


295 



Trade Routes between Northern and Southern Europe in the 
13TH and 14TH Centuries 


The German cities shown on the map belonged to a league ( hansa ), which controlled the 
commerce of the Baltic Sea. At the period of its greatest power, the Hanseatic League 
included upwards of eighty cities along the Baltic coast and in the inland districts of northern 
Germany. 

mountain passes and long stretches of desert, and hence was 
profitably used only for the transport of valuable articles small 
in bulk. The conquests of the Ottoman Turks (§ 79) greatly 






























296 


Medieval Civilization 


interfered with the use of this route by Christians after the 
middle of the fifteenth century. 

Oriental goods, upon reaching the Mediterranean, could be 
transported by water to northern Europe. Every year the 
European Venetians sent a fleet loaded with eastern products 
trade routes to Bruges in Flanders, a city which was the most 
important depot of trade with Germany, England, and Scan¬ 
dinavia. Bruges also formed the terminus of the main overland 
route leading from Venice over the Alps and down the Rhine. 
Many other commercial highways also linked the Mediterranean 
with the North Sea and the Baltic. 

One hindrance to business enterprise in medieval times was 
the inadequate supply of money. From the beginning of the 
Lack of Christian era to the twelfth century there seems to 

money have been a steady decrease in the amount of 

money in circulation, partly because so much moved to the 
Orient in payment for luxuries, and partly because the few 
mines in western Europe went out of use during the period of 
the invasions. The scarcity of money helped directly to build 
up the feudal system, since wages, salaries, and rents could be 
paid only in personal services or in goods (§ 74). The money 
supply increased during the latter part of the Middle Ages, 
but it did not become sufficient for the needs of business until 
the discovery of the New World enabled the Spaniards to tap 
the wealth of the silver mines in Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia. 

The prejudice against “ usury,” as any lending of money at 
interest was called, formed another hindrance to business enter- 
“ Usury ” prise. It seemed wrong for a person to receive 
laws interest, since he lost nothing by the loan of his 

money. Numerous Church laws condemned the receipt of 
interest as unchristian. If, however, the lender could show that 
he had suffered any loss, or had been prevented from making 
any gain, through not having his money, he might charge 
something for its use. People in time began to distinguish 
between interest moderate in amount and an excessive charge 
for the use of money. The latter was henceforth prohibited as 
usurious. 


Civic Trade 


2 97 


The business of money lending, denied to Christians, fell into 
the hands of the Jews. Popular prejudice made it difficult for 
them to engage in agriculture, while the guild regu- The Jews ag 
lations barred them from industry. They turned money 
to trade and finance for a livelihood and became lenders 
the chief capitalists of medieval times. But the laws gave the 
Jews no protection, and kings and nobles constantly extorted 



Prospecting and Digging for Minerals 

From Agricola’s De re metallica 

The divining rod, shown in the illustration, was often used in attempts to locate 
metallic ores, as well as hidden springs of water. 

large sums from them. The persecutions of the Jews date from 
the era of the crusades, when it was as easy to excite fanatical 
hatred against them as against the Moslems. One English king 
(Edward I) drove the Jews from England, and Ferdinand and 
Isabella expelled them from Spain. 

The Jews were least persecuted in the commercial cities of 
northern Italy. Florence, Genoa, and Venice in the thirteenth 















298 


Medieval Civilization 


century were the money centers of Europe. The banking com¬ 
panies in these cities received deposits and then loaned the money 
Italian to foreign governments and great nobles. The 

banking Italian banking house's had branches in the princi¬ 

pal cities of Europe. It became possible, therefore, to introduce 
the use of bills of exchange as a means of balancing debts be¬ 
tween countries, without the necessity of sending the actual 
money. This system of international credit was doubly im¬ 
portant at a time when so many risks attended the transpor¬ 
tation of the precious metals. Another Florentine invention 
was bookkeeping by double-entry. 

89. Architecture : the Cathedrals 

Architecture made little advance in western Europe for several 
centuries after the barbarian invasions, except in Italy, which 
Two archi- was subject to Byzantine influence, and in Spain, 
tectural styles which wa s a center of Moorish culture. The arch¬ 
itectural revival dates from the time of Charlemagne, with the 
adoption of the style called Romanesque, because it went back 
to Roman principles of construction (§63). Romanesque 
architecture arose in northern Italy and southern France and 
gradually spread to other European countries. It was followed 
by the Gothic style of architecture, which prevailed during the 
later Middle Ages. 

The church of the early Christians seems to have been modeled 
upon the Roman basilica, with its arrangement of nave and 
The Roman- aisles, its circular arched recess (apse) at one end, 
esque style and p s fl a t ? woo den ceiling supported by columns 
(§ 63). The Romanesque church 1 departed from the basilican 
plan by the introduction of transepts, thus giving the building 
the form of a Latin cross. A dome, which might be covered by 
a, pointed roof, was generally raised over the junction of the 
nave and transepts. At the same time the apse was enlarged 
so as to form the choir, a place reserved for the clergy. 

The Romanesque church also differed from a basilica in the 
use of vaulting to take the place of a flat ceiling. The old 

1 See the illustration on page 349. 


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Architecture: the Cathedrals 


299 


Romans had constructed their vaulted roofs and domes in con¬ 
crete, which forms a rigid mass and rests securely upon the walls 
like the lid of a box. Medieval architects, how- Vaulting and 
ever, built in stone, which exerts an outward the round 
thrust and tends to force the walls apart. Conse- arch 
quently they were obliged to make the walls very thick and to 



1 Principal west doorway; 2, 3 aisles of nave; 4 north porch; 5 tower; 6, 6 pulpits; 7 
throne; 8 altar; 9 font; 10, 11 choir aisles; 12, 13 east or choir transept; 14, sacristy; 15 
cloister; 16 chapter house. 

strengthen them by piers, or buttresses, on the outside of the 
edifice. It was also necessary to reduce the width of the vaulted 
spaces. The vaulting, windows, and doorways had the form 
of the round arch, that is, a semi-circle, as in the ancient Roman 
monuments. 




















































3 °° 


Medieval Civilization 


Gothic architecture arose in France in the country around 
Paris, at a time when the French kingdom was taking the lead 
The Gothic i n European affairs. It later spread to England, 
st y le Germany, the Netherlands, and even to southern 

Europe. The term Gothic was applied contemptuously to 
this architectural style by writers of the sixteenth and seven¬ 
teenth centuries, who regarded 
everything non-classical as bar¬ 
barous. They believed it to be 
an invention of the barbarian 
Goths, and so they called it 
Gothic. 

The Gothic style formed a 
natural development from Ro- 

_ , manesque. The 

' * Ribbed H 

vaulting and architects of a Gothic 

the flying church wished to re¬ 
buttress 

tarn the vaulted ceil¬ 
ing, but at the same time to do 
away with thick, solid walls, which 
had so little window space as to 
leave the interior of the building 
dark and gloomy. They solved 
this problem, in the first place, 
by using a great number of stone 
ribs, which rested on pillars and 
gathered up the weight of the 
ceiling. Ribbed vaulting made 
possible higher ceilings, spanning 
wider areas, than in] Romanesque 
churches. In the second place, the pillars supporting the ribs 
were themselves connected by means of flying buttresses with 
stout piers of masonry outside the walls of the church. These 
walls, relieved from the pressure of the ceiling, now became a 
mere screen. They could be built of light materials and opened 
up with high, wide windows. 

Gothic builders also made use of the pointed arch. It was 



Cross Section of Amiens 
Cathedral 

A, vaulting; B, ribs; C, flying but¬ 
tresses; D buttresses; E, low windows; 
F, clerestory. 
















































Education : the Universities 


301 


not Christian in origin, for it had long been known to the Arabs 
in the Near East and the Moslem conquerors of Sicily. The 
semi-circular or round arch can be only half as The pointed 
high as it is wide, but the pointed arch may vary arch 
greatly in its proportions. The use of this device enabled 
builders to bridge over different widths at any required height. 
It is also lighter and more graceful than the round arch. 

The labors of the Gothic architect were admirably seconded 
by those of other artists. The sculptor cut figures of men, 
animals, and plants in the utmost profusion. The Gothic 
painter covered vacant wall spaces with brilliant ornament 
mosaics and frescoes. The wood-carver made exquisite choir 
stalls, pulpits, altars, and screens. Master workmen filled the 
stone tracery of the windows with stained glass unequaled in 
coloring by the finest modern work. 

Gothic architecture, though at first confined to churches, 
came to be used for other buildings. Monuments of the secu¬ 
lar Gothic include beautiful town halls, guild halls, The secular 
markets, and charming private houses. But the Gothic 
cathedral remained the best expression of the Gothic style. 

90. Education: the Universities 

The educational system of the early Middle Ages was based 
on monastic and cathedral schools, where boys were trained to 
become monks or priests. Such schools had been ^ j 
created or restored by Charlemagne. The teach¬ 
ing, which lay entirely in the hands of the clergy, was elementary 
in character. Pupils learned enough Latin grammar to read 
religious books, if not always to understand them, and enough 
music to follow the services of the Church. They also studied 
arithmetic by means of the awkward Roman notation, received 
a smattering of astronomy, and sometimes gained a little knowl¬ 
edge of such subjects as geography, law, and philosophy. Be¬ 
sides these monastic and cathedral schools, others were main¬ 
tained by the guilds and by private benefactors. 

There are about fifty European universities dating from the 
later Middle Ages. They arose, as it were, spontaneously. 


3° 2 


Medieval Civilization 


Western Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries felt the 
thrill of a great intellectual revival. It was stimulated by inter- 
Rise of course with the highly cultivated Arabs in Spain, 

universities Sicily, and the East, and with the Greek scholars 
of Constantinople during the crusades. The desire for instruc¬ 



tion became so general that elementary schools could not satisfy 
it. Other schools were then opened in the cities, and to them 
flocked eager learners from every quarter. 

How easily a university might grow up about the personality 
of some eminent teacher is shown by the career of Abelard. The 
eldest son of a noble family in Brittany, Abelard would natu- 



















Education: the Universities 


303 


rally have entered upon a military career, but he chose instead 
the life of a scholar and the contests of debate. He came to 
Paris and attended the lectures given by a master Peter Abelard, 
of the cathedral school of Notre Dame. Abelard 1° 79 -1 14 2 
himself soon set up as a lecturer. Few teachers have ever 
attracted so large and so devoted a following. His lecture 
room under the shadow of the great cathedral was filled with a 
crowd of youths and men drawn from all countries. 

The fame of Abelard led to an increase of masters and students 
at Paris and so paved the way for the establishment of the uni¬ 
versity there, later in the twelfth century. Paris university 
soon became such a center of learning, particularly of Pans 
in theology and philosophy, that a medieval writer referred to it 
as “the mill where the world’s corn is ground, and the hearth 
where its bread is baked.” The University of Paris, in the time 
of its greatest prosperity, had over five thousand students. It 
furnished the model for Oxford University in England, as well 
as for the learned institutions of Scotland, Denmark, Sweden, 
and Germany. 

The institutions of learning in southern Europe were modeled, 
more or less, upon the University of Bologna. At this Italian 
city a celebrated teacher named Irnerius gathered University 
about him thousands of pupils for the study of the Bol °g na 
Corpus Juris Civilis, the code of Justinian (§ 54). The univer¬ 
sity developed out of his law school. Bologna was the center 
from which the Roman system of jurisprudence made its way 
into France, Germany, and other Continental countries. 

The word “university” 1 meant at first simply a union or 
association. In the Middle Ages all artisans belonged to guilds, 
and when teachers and pupils associated themselves University 
for study they naturally copied the guild form of organization 
organization. After passing part of his examination, a student 
(apprentice) became a “bachelor of arts” (journeyman) and 
might teach certain elementary subjects to those beneath him. 
Upon the completion of the full course — usually six years in 
length — the bachelor took his final examination and, if success- 

1 Latin universitas. 


3°4 


Medieval Civilization 



Colleges 


Faculties 


fill, received the coveted degree of “master of arts.” Many 
students, of course, never took a degree at all. 

The members of a university usually lived in a number of 
colleges. These seem to have been at first little more than 
lodging houses, where poor students were cared for 
at the expense of some benefactor. As the colleges 
increased in wealth, through the gifts made to them, they be¬ 
came centers of instruction under the direction of masters. 

At Oxford and Cambridge, 
where the collegiate system 
has been retained to the 
present time, each college 
possesses separate buildings 
and enjoys the privilege of 
self-government. 

The subjects of instruction 
in a university were grouped 
under the four 
faculties of 
arts, theology, law, and med¬ 
icine. The first-named fac¬ 
ulty taught the “ seven lib¬ 
eral arts,” that is, grammar, 
rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, 
music, geometry, and astron¬ 
omy. Theology, law, and 
medicine then, as now, were 
professional subjects, taken 
up after the completion of 
the arts course. Owing to the constant movement of stu¬ 
dents from one university to another, each institution tended 
to specialize in one or more fields of learning. Thus, Paris 
came to be noted for theology, Montpellier, Padua, and 
Salerno for medicine, and Orleans, Bologna, and Salamanca for 
law. 

A university did not need an expensive collection of libraries, 
laboratories, and museums. The only necessary equipment 


Master, Usher, and Boys 

From an early fourteenth-century manuscript at 
Heidelberg, Germany. 



















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This cathedra], which is surpassed in size among European churches only by St. Peter’s at Rome and the Cathedral of 
Seville, was begun in 1386 and was not entirely completed for more than four centuries thereafter. The material is brick 
cased in marble. The many flying buttresses, the countless pinnacles surmounted by statues, and the vast and splendid 
windows all stamp the building as essentially Northern Gothic in architectural style. 



































Science and Invention 


305 


consisted of lecture rooms for the professors. Not even benches 
or chairs were required, for students often sat on the straw- 
strewn floors. The high price of manuscripts 
compelled professors to give all instruction by 
lectures. This method of teaching is still used to some extent 
in modern universities. 

Most medieval universities did little to encourage original 
research. Law students memorized the code of Justinian. 
Medical Methods 
students of stud y 
learned anatomy and 
physiology from old 
Greek books, instead 
of in the dissecting 
room. Theologians 
went to the Bible, the 
Church Fathers, or 
Aristotle for answers 
to the questions 
that perplexed them. 

They were thus satis¬ 
fied to appeal to au¬ 
thority, rather than 
take the trouble of 
finding out things for 
themselves. Some of them liked to debate the most subtle 
questions, for instance, “Can God ever know more than He 
knows that He knows?” Mental gymnastics of this sort pro¬ 
vided a good training in logic, but added nothing to the sum of 
human knowledge. Better methods of study developed when 
men began to substitute scientific observation and experiment 
for speculation. 

91. Science and Invention 

The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were marked by a 
healthy interest in science. Long encyclopedias, written in 
Latin, collected all available information about the world. The 



A University Lecture 

After a fifteenth-century manuscript in the British 
Museum. 

































306 


Medieval Civilization 


study of physics, chemistry, and astronomy made conspic¬ 
uous progress, partly as a result of the influence of Arabian 
Pure scholars. Considerable work was also done in 

science arithmetic and algebra, continuing the researches of 

the Arabs in these subjects. It was from this time that the 
“ Arabic ” numerals (§ n), with their symbol for zero, began 
to displace finger counting and the abacus in Christian Europe. 



Halley’s Comet in 1066 


Halley’s comet is named after Edward Halley, an English astronomer, who calculated its 
orbit in 1682 and predicted its return in 1759, a prediction which was verified. The left 
panel from the Bayeux Tapestry shows people gazing in wonder at the comet: Isti mirantur 
stellam. This is the earliest representation of a celestial object which in former days was 
regarded as a portent of evil. 


We may take the Englishman, Roger Bacon, as a representa¬ 
tive of this scientific interest. He studied at Paris, where his 
Roger Bacon attainments secured for him the title of the “ Won- 
about 1214- derful Doctor,” and lectured at Oxford. At a 
period when Aristotle’s influence was unbounded, 
Bacon turned away from theology and philosophy to mathe¬ 
matics and the sciences. No great discoveries were made by 
him, but it is interesting to read a passage in one of his works 
where some modern inventions are distinctly foreseen. In time, 
he wrote, ships will be moved without rowers, and carriages will 
be propelled without animals to draw them. Machines for 















Science and Invention 


307 


flying will also be constructed, “ wherein a man sits revolving 
some engine by which artificial wings are made to beat the air 
like a flying bird.” 

Various practical inventions, which were made in the later 
Middle Ages, include spectacles and magnifying glasses, later 
to be developed into the telescope and microscope; Applied 
mechanical clocks, enabling man to mark the pas- science 
sage of time with fair accuracy; and mirrors of glass, replacing 
those of burnished metal. Three other inventions worked out 
at this period had an especially important effect on the course of 
civilization. The three were 
the mariner’s compass, gunpow¬ 
der, and the printing press. 

The origin of the mariner’s 
compass is involved in some 
obscurity. The The mariner’s 
Chinese have been compass 
credited with the discovery 
that a needle, when rubbed with 
a lodestone, has the mysterious 
power of pointing to the north. 

The Arabs may have introduced this rude form of the compass 
among Mediterranean sailors. The instrument, improved by 
being balanced on a pivot so that it would not be affected 
by choppy seas, was first used by Europeans in the thirteenth 
century. It enabled sailors to find their bearings even in murky 
weather and on starless nights. The mariner’s compass came 
to be of great aid in the long voyages of discovery which were 
undertaken during early modern times. 

The compound of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulphur, known as 
gunpowder, seems to have been first used by the Chinese and 
later by the Arabs. Europeans discovered the 

Gunpowder 

secret of it as early as the thirteenth century. 

They regarded it as merely a sort of firework, producing a 
sudden and brilliant flame, and did not suspect that in a con¬ 
fined space the expansive power of its gases could be used to 
hurl projectiles. Gunpowder was occasionally manufactured as 






3°8 


Medieval Civilization 


a propellant during the fourteenth century, but for a long time it 
made more noise than it did harm. Small brass cannon, throw¬ 
ing stone or iron balls, began at length to displace the medieval 
siege weapons, and still later muskets took the place of the bow, 
the crossbow, and the pike. The revolution in the art of war¬ 
fare introduced by gunpowder had vast importance. It de¬ 
stroyed the usefulness of the castle and enabled the peasant to 

fight the mailed knight on 
equal terms. Gunpowder, 
accordingly, must be in¬ 
cluded among the forces 
which brought about the 
downfall of feudalism. 

The Chinese were the 
first to print books by 
The printing using mova- 
P ress ble type, that 

is, a type for each letter. 
The art was found in Eu¬ 
rope by the middle of the 
fifteenth century. Who 
invented it there is not 
known with certainty, but 
a German printer, Johann 
Gutenberg of Mainz, seems 
to have been the first to 
print on a large scale. 

The oldest large printed 
book which issued from his press was a Latin Bible, printed 
in 1456. 

The books printed in the fifteenth century go by the name of 
incunabula . 1 Of the seven or eight million volumes which 
appeared before 1500, about thirty thousand are 
believed to be still in existence. Many of these 
earliest books were printed in heavy, “black letter” type, an 

1 A. Latin word meaning “cradle” or “birthplace,” and so the beginning of 
anything. 



An Early Printing Press 

Enlarged from the printer’s mark of I. B. 
Ascensius. Used on the title pages of books printed 
by him, 1507-1535. 


Incunabula 




































Popular Superstitions 


309 


imitation of the characters used in monkish manuscripts. It 
is still retained for most books printed in Germany. The 
clearer and neater “Roman” characters, resembling the letters 
employed for ancient Roman inscriptions, came into use in 
southern Europe and England. Aldus Manutius, a famous 
Venetian printer, devised “italic” type. He has also the credit 
for the introduction of punctuation marks. In ancient writings 
words were run together successively, without any indication 
of pause or break in the sentence. 

Printed books could be multiplied far more rapidly than 
manuscripts copied by hand. They could also be far more 
accurate than manuscripts, for, when an entire significance 
edition was printed from the same type, mistakes of P rintin g 
in the different copies were eliminated. Furthermore, the in¬ 
vention of printing destroyed the monopoly of learning pos¬ 
sessed by the universities and people of wealth. Books were 
now the possession of the many, not for the luxury of the few. 
Any one who could read had opened to him the gateway of 
knowledge; he became a citizen, henceforth, of the republic of 
letters. Printing, which made possible popular education, 
public libraries, and ultimately, cheap newspapers, thus became 
a force emancipating mankind from bondage to ignorance. 

92. Popular Superstitions 

It would be possible to draw up a long list of the superstitions 
which were believed in by medieval peoples, both uneducated 
and educated. Thus, the study of chemistry was , 

, . , . . . t . Alchemy 

much mixed up with alchemy, a pseudo-science 

which western Europe received from the Arabs, who in turn 
had taken it from Alexandrian Greeks in the early centuries of 
the Christian era. The alchemists sought for the “ philoso¬ 
pher’s stone,” or elixir, which would turn the baser metals into 
gold. They never found it, but they learned a good deal about 
the nature of metals and discovered a number of compounds 
and colors. Alchemy in this way contributed to the advance 
of chemical knowledge. 


3 io 


Medieval Civilization 


Astronomy, the wise mother, had a foolish daughter, astrology, 
the origin of which can be traced back to Babylonia (§ 27). 

Medieval students no longer regarded the stars as 

Astrology 

divine, but they believed that the natural world and 
the life of men were controlled by celestial influences. Astrol¬ 
ogers tried to predict the fate of a person from the position 



An Alchemist in his Laboratory 

Notice in this picture the symbols for gold (sun), silver (moon), and mercury. The lion 
devouring the snake represents an acid dissolving a salt. 


of the planets at the time of his birth. The planet Venus in 
this way became connected with love, Mars with a warlike 
disposition, and Jupiter with power and “joviality.” Other 
human characteristics were associated with the planets Mercury 
and Saturn. Astrological rules were also drawn from the signs 
of the zodiac. A child born under the sign of the Lion would be 
courageous; one born under the Crab would not go forward well 
in life; one born under the Waterman would probably be 
drowned, and so forth. Such fancies seem absurd enough, but 
in the Middle Ages even educated people entertained them. 

Alchemy and astrology were not the only instances of medie¬ 
val credulity. The most improbable stories found ready ac- 



































Popular Superstitions 


3ii 



The Phcenix 
F rom a book printed in 1579. 


ceptance. Roger Bacon, for instance, thought that “flying 
dragons” still existed in Europe and that eating their flesh 
lengthened human Medieval 
life. Works on credulity 
natural history soberly described 
the lizard-like salamander, which 
dwelt in fire; the phcenix, a 
bird which, after living for five 
hundred years, burned itself to 
death and then rose again full 
grown from the ashes; and the 
unicorn a fabulous creature 
whose single horn may have 
been suggested by that of the 
Indian rhinoceros. Various 

plants and minerals were also credited with marvelous pow¬ 
ers. The nasturtium, used as a liniment, would keep one’s 
hair from falling out, and the sapphire, when powdered and 

mixed with milk, would heal 
ulcers and cure headache. 
Similar beliefs linger to¬ 
day among ignorant people, 
even in civilized lands. 

Magicians of every sort 
flourished in the Middle 

Ages. Some „ . . 

Magicians 

took omens 
from dreams, some read 
fortunes in the lines and 
irregularities of the hand, 
and still others professed 
to reveal the future by pre¬ 
tended communication with 
departed spirits. Magi¬ 
cians also made talismans 
or lucky objects to be worn on the person, mirrors in which the 
images of the year or the absent were reflected, and various 



The Unicorn 

Medieval peoples believed that many fabulous 
creatures lived in the interior of Asia. One of 
these was the unicorn, with the head and body of 
a horse, the hind legs of an antelope, the beard of 
a goat, and a long sharp horn set in the middle of 
the forehead. The picture above is reproduced 
from an old-time “ Historic of Four-Footed 










3 12 


Medieval Civilization 


Unlucky days 


powders which, when mixed with food or drink, would inspire 
hatred or affection in the one consuming them. There were 
numberless devices by which practitioners of magic made a 
living at the expense of the ignorant and the superstitious. 

The Middle Ages inherited from antiquity the observance of 
unlucky days. These went under the name of “Egyptian 
days,” so called because it was believed that on one 
of them the plagues had been sent to devastate the 
land of Egypt and on another Pharaoh and his host had been 
swallowed up in the Red Sea. Twenty-four days in the year 

were regarded as very un¬ 
lucky. At such times one 
ought not to buy and sell, 
to build a house, to plant 
a field, to travel, or, in fact, 
to undertake anything at 
all important. The ob¬ 
servance of such days 
gradually declined, but 
there still exists a popular 
prejudice against Friday. 

The belief in witchcraft, 
which prevailed in an¬ 
tiquity, was also strongly held during the latter part of the 
Middle Ages and early modern times. Witches 
were supposed to have sold themselves to the Devil, 
receiving in return the power to work magic. They could change 
themselves or others into animals, they had charms against the 
hurt of weapons, they could raise storms and destroy crops, and 
they could convey thorns, pins, and other objects into their vic¬ 
tims’ bodies, thus causing sickness and death. At night they rode 
on broomsticks through the air and assembled in some lonely place 
for feasts, dances, and wild revels. The Devil himself attended 
•these “Witches’ Sabbaths” and taught his followers their 
diabolic arts. There were various tests for the discovery of 
witches and wizards, the most usual being the ordeal by cold 
water. 



Magician Rescued from the Devil 

Miniature in a thirteenth-century manuscript 
in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. The Devil, 
attempting to seize a magician who had formed a 
pact with him, is prevented by a lay brother. 


Witchcraft 





Manners and Customs 


3 T 3 


The numerous trials and executions for witchcraft form a dark 
page in history. Thousands of harmless old men and women 
were put to death, on the charge of being leagued witchcraft 
with the Devil. The most intelligent and humane persecutions 
people believed in the reality of witchcraft. The witch epi¬ 
demic which broke out in America during the seventeenth cen¬ 
tury, reaching its height at Salem, Massachusetts, was simply a 
reflection of the European fear and hatred of witches. 



Water Test for Witchcraft 


This form of ordeal rested on the old belief that pure water would reject an impure person. 
Any one accused of witchcraft might therefore be thrown bound in a stream; if he floated he 
was guilty; if he sank he was innocent and had to be rescued. 

93. Manners and Customs 

It is pleasant to turn from the superstitions of the Middle 

Ages to the games, sports, and festivals which helped to make 

life agreeable alike for rich and poor, for nobles 

° , Indoor games 

and peasants, borne indoor games are ol eastern 

origin. Chess, for instance, arose in India as a war game. On 

each side a king and his general, with chariots, cavalry, ele- 



















■314 


Medieval Civilization 


phants, and infantry, met in battle array. These survive in 
the rooks, knights, bishops, and pawns of the modern game. 
Checkers is a sort of simplified chess, in wl^ich the pieces are 
all pawns, till they get across the board and become kings. 
Playing cards are another Oriental invention. They were 
introduced into Europe in the fourteenth century, either by 
the Arabs or the gypsies. Their first use seems to have been 

for telling fortunes. 

Many outdoor games 
are derived from those 
Outdoor played in medie- 
games val times. How 
one kind of game may 
become the parent of many 
others is seen in the case 
of the ball-play. The an¬ 
cients tossed and caught 
balls as children do now. 
They also had a game in 
which each side tried to 
secure the ball and throw 
it over the adversary’s 
goal line. This game 
lasted on into the Middle 
Ages, and from it football 
has descended. The an¬ 
cients seem never to have 
used a stick or bat in their ball-play. The Persians, however, 
began to play ball on horseback, using a long mallet for the 
purpose, and introduced their new sport throughout Asia. Un¬ 
der the Tibetan name of pulu (“ball”) it found its way into 
Europe. When once the mallet had been invented for use 
on horseback, it could be easily used on foot, and so polo gave 
rise to the various games in which balls are hit with bats, includ¬ 
ing tennis, hockey, golf, cricket, baseball, and croquet. 

The difference between our ideas of what constitutes “sport” 
and those of our ancestors is shown by the popularity of baiting. 



Knights Playing Chess 

























































Manners and Customs 


3i5 


Baiting 


In the twelfth century bulls, bears, and even horses were baited. 
Cock-fighting formed another common amusement. It was not 
until the nineteenth century that an English society 
for the prevention of cruelty to animals succeeded 
in getting a law passed which forbade these cruel sports. 
Most civilized countries now have similar laws. 

No account of life in the Middle Ages can well omit some 

reference to the celebration of festivals. Many festivals not 

of Christian origin were derived from the cere- 

. Festivals 

monies with which the heathen peoples of Europe 

had been accustomed to mark the changes of the seasons. 
April Fool’s Day formed a relic of festivities held at the vernal 
equinox. May 
Day, another fes¬ 
tival of spring, 
honored the spirits 
of trees and of all 
budding vegeta¬ 
tion. The per¬ 
sons who acted as 
May kings and 
May queens rep¬ 
resented these 
spirits. Accord¬ 
ing to the original custom a new May tree was cut down in 
the forest every year, but later a permanent May pole was 
set up on the village common. On Midsummer Eve (June 23), 
which marked the summer solstice, came the fire festival, when 
people built bonfires and leaped over them, walked in procession 
with torches round the fields, and rolled burning wheels down 
the hillsides. These curious rites may have been once connected 
with sun worship. Hallow Eve, so called from being the eve 
of All Saints’ Day ^November 1), also seems to have been a 
survival of a heathen celebration. Witches and fairies were 
supposed to assemble on this night. The festival of Christmas, 
coming at the winter solstice, kept some heathen features, such 
as the use of mistletoe with which Celtic priests once decked the 



Bear Baiting 

From the Luttrell Psalter. 




3i 6 


Medieval Civilization 


altars of their gods. The Christmas tree, however, is not a 
relic of heathenism. 

Young and old took part in the dances which accompanied 
village festivals. The Morris dance was very popular in medie- 
The Morris val England. The name, a corruption of Moorish, 
dance refers to its origin in Spain. The Morris dance 

was especially associated with May Day and was danced round 

a May pole to a 
lively and caper¬ 
ing step. The 
performers repre¬ 
sented Robin 
Hood, Maid Mar¬ 
ian, his wife, Tom 
the Piper, and 
other traditional 
characters. They 
wore on their gar¬ 
ments bells tuned 
to different notes, 
so as to sound in 
harmony. 

Mumming had a 
:t particular associa¬ 
tion with Christ¬ 
mas. Mummers were bands of men and women who disguised 
themselves in masks and skins of animals and then 
serenaded people outside their houses. The mum¬ 
mers often performed little plays in which Father Christmas, 
Old King Cole, and St. George were familiar figures. 

Many plays of a religious character came into vogue during 
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The earliest were the 
“miracles.” They presented in dramatic form 
scenes from the Bible and stories of the saints or 
martyrs. The actors at first were priests, and the stage was 
the church itself or the churchyard. This religious setting did 
not prevent the introduction of clowns and buffoons. The 



Mummers 

From a manuscript now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, 
was written and illuminated in the reign of Edward III. 


Mumming 


Miracle plays 









Manners and Customs 


3i7 


miracle play after a time passed from the clergy to the guilds. 
All the guilds of a town usually gave an exhibition once a year. 
Each guild presented a single scene in the story. An exhibition 
might last for several days and have as many as fifty scenes, 
beginning at Creation and ending with Doomsday. 



A Miracle Play at Coventry, England 

The rude platform on wheels, which served as a stage, was drawn by apprentices to the 
market place. Each guild had its own stage. 


The “miracles” were followed by the “moralities.” These 
dealt with the struggle between good and evil, rather than with 
religious history. Characters such as Charity, Morality 
Faith, Prudence, Riches, Confession, and Death P la y s 
appeared and enacted a story intended to teach moral lessons. 
Both miracle and morality plays survived into sixteenth-century 
England and influenced the development of the modern drama 
in that country. 

























































Medieval Civilization 


3 l8 


Dwellings 


Furniture 


The decline of feudalism, resulting in the cessation of private 
warfare, made it unnecessary for the nobility to build huge 
and uncomfortable castles. Many of these were 
either torn down or made over into country 
houses. Though less bare and inconvenient than castles, they 
were still poorly lighted, ill-ventilated, and in winter scarcely 
warmed by the open wood fires. It was a great improvement 
when glass windows came to be substituted for wooden shutters 
or oiled paper. The introduction of chimneys to keep heat in 
and let smoke out formed yet another improvement. After 
the Gothic style came to be used for secular buildings (§ 89), 
beautiful and commodious residences were often erected by 
nobles and merchants in the cities. 

People in the Middle Ages, even the well-to-do, got along with 
little furniture. The great hall of a country house contained a 
long dining table, with benches used at meals, and 
a few stools. The family beds often occupied 
curtained recesses in the walls, but guests might have to sleep 
on the floor of the hall. Servants often slept in stables. Few 
persons could afford rugs to cover the floor; the poor used 
rushes. Utensils were few, and articles of glass and silver were 
practically unknown, except in the houses of the rich. 

The pictures in old manuscripts give us a good idea of medieval 
dress. It naturally varied with time and place, and according 
to the social position of the wearer. Laws were 
sometimes passed, without much result, to regu¬ 
late the quality, shape, and cost of the costumes to be worn by 
different orders of society. The moralists of the age were 
shocked, then as now, when tightly fitting garments, which 
showed the outlines of the body, became fashionable. The 
inconvenience of putting them on led to the use of buttons and 
buttonholes. Women’s headdresses were often of extraordinary 
height and shape. Not less remarkable were the pointed shoes 
worn by men. The points finally got so long that they hindered 
walking, unless tied by a ribbon to the knees. 

Medieval cookbooks show that people of means had all sorts 
of elaborate and expensive dishes. Dinner at a nobleman’s 


Costume 


National Languages and Literatures 319 


Food 


house might include ten or twelve courses, mostly meats and 
game. Such things as hedgehogs, peacocks, sparrows, and 
porpoises, which would hardly tempt the modern 
palate, were relished. Much use was made of 
spices in preparing meats and gravies and for flavoring wines. 

People in medieval times had no knives or forks and conse¬ 
quently ate with their fingers. Daggers also were employed to 
convey food to the mouth. Forks date from the Table 
end of the thirteenth century, but were adopted etiquette 
only slowly. Napkins were another table convenience unknown 
in the Middle 

. M tq-noooftmtruu^otnOt 

Ages. DUwn.wstLtui<}um!(\ <mt 

Ale and beer ipUaTtttum-ctitl qiUifitc 
formed the drink 
of the . . 

Drinking 

com¬ 
mon people, tak¬ 
ing the place of 

tea and coffee now. . 

A Medieval Inn 

The upper classes ^ * c , ... 

1 1 From a fourteenth-century manuscript. Shows a pilgrim 

regaled them- drinking before an inn with the sign of the Bush. The bush of 
nn rr)C ,f 1 v evergreen, which was common in Roman wineshops, became a 
selves UI1 cusujy sign for an inn throughout medieval Europe. 

wines. Drunken¬ 
ness was common. It seems to have been a Teutonic char¬ 
acteristic. The Northmen were hard drinkers, and of the an¬ 
cient Germans a Roman writer states that “to pass an entire 
day and night in drinking disgraces no one.” 1 This habit of 
intoxication survived into medieval Germany, and the Anglo- 
Saxons and Danes introduced it into England. 

94. National Languages and Literatures 

Latin continued to be an international language throughout 
the Middle Ages. The Roman Church used it for Latin ag an 
papal bulls and other documents. Prayers were international 
recited, hymns were sung, and sometimes ser- lan s ua s e 
mons were preached in Latin. It was also the language of 

1 Tacitus, Germania , 22. 






320 


Medieval Civilization 


The 

Romance 

languages 


men of culture everywhere in Christendom. University pro¬ 
fessors lectured in Latin, students spoke Latin, lawyers ad¬ 
dressed judges in Latin, and the merchants in different countries 
wrote Latin letters to one another. All learned books were 
composed in Latin until the close of the sixteenth century. 
This practice has not yet been entirely abandoned by scholars. 

Each European country during the later Middle Ages had 
also its own national tongue. The Romance languages, includ¬ 
ing modern French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, 
and Rumanian, were derived from the Latin spoken 
by the Romanized inhabitants of the lands now 
known as France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Rumania (§ 54). 
Their colloquial Latin naturally lacked the elegance of the 
literary Latin used by Caesar, Cicero, and other ancient authors. 
The difference between the written and spoken forms of the 
language became more marked from the fifth century onward, 
in consequence of the barbarian invasions. The result was the 
formation of new languages, related to, yet different from, the 
old classical Latin in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. 

The French language originated from the popular Latin of 
the Gallo-Romans in the north of France, particularly in the 
region about Paris. The unification of the French 
kingdom under Hugh Capet and his successors 
(§ 80) gradually extended the speech of northern France 
over the entire country. Modern French contains less than a 
thousand words introduced by the German invaders of Gaul, 
while the words of Celtic origin are even fewer in number. The 
language, therefore, is almost entirely of Latin derivation. 

The Teutonic peoples who remained outside what had been 
the limits of the Roman world continued to use their native 
The Teutonic tongues during the Middle Ages. Thus arose 
languages modern German, Dutch, Flemish, and the various 
Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and 
Icelandic). 1 All these languages in their earliest known forms 
show unmistakable traces of a common origin. 

1 Icelandic is the oldest and purest form of Scandinavian. Danish and Norwegian 
are practically the same; in fact, their literary or book-language is one. 


French 



























National Languages and Literatures 321 


Anglo-Saxon 


Britain was the only Roman province in the west of Europe 
where a Teutonic language took root and maintained itself. 
Here the rough, guttural speech of the Anglo- 
Saxons completely drove out the popular Latin. 
Anglo-Saxon, in course of time, underwent vaiious changes. 
Christian missionaries introduced many new Latin terms for 
church offices, services, and observances. The Danes, besides 
contributing some place-names, gave us that most useful 
word are, and also the habit of using to before an infinitive. 
The coming of the Normans deeply affected Anglo-Saxon. 
Norman-French influence helped to make the language sim¬ 
pler, by ridding it of the cumbersome declensions and conju¬ 
gations which it had in common with all Teutonic tongues. 
Many new Norman-French words also crept in, when the 
hostility of the English people toward their conquerors disap¬ 
peared. 

Anglo-Saxon, by the middle of the thirteenth century, had 
so far developed that it may now be called English. In the 
poems of Chaucer (about 1340-1400), especially his 
Canterbury Tales , English wears quite a modern 
look, though the reader is sometimes troubled by the old spelling 
and by certain words not now in use. The changes in the 
grammar of the language have been so extremely slight since 
the end of the fifteenth century that any Englishman of ordinary 
education can read without difficulty a book written more than 
four hundred years ago. English has been, and still is, extremely 
hospitable to new words, so that its vocabulary has grown very 
fast by the adoption of terms from Latin, French, and other 
tongues. These have immensely increased the expressiveness 
of English, while giving it a position midway between the very 
different Romance and Teutonic languages. 

Medieval literature includes some notable productions. 
Many beautiful hymns were composed in Latin. A number 
of them have been translated into English, such 
as the familiar “Jerusalem the Golden.” Latin 
hymns made use of rhyme, then something of a novelty, and 
thus helped to popularize this poetic device. 


English 


Latin hymns 


322 


Medieval Civilization 


A pleasant glimpse of gay society is afforded by the songs 
of the troubadours. These professional poets flourished in the 
Songs Of the south of France, but many of them traveled from 
troubadours court to court in other countries. Their verses, 
composed in the Provencal 1 language, were always sung to the 
accompaniment of some musical instrument, generally the lute. 
Romantic love and deeds of chivalry were the two themes which 
most inspired the troubadours. They, too, took up the use of 

rhyme, using it so skillfully as 
to become the teachers of Eu¬ 
rope in lyric poetry. 

Northern France gave birth 
to epic or narrative poems, de- 
“ Song of scribing the ex- 
Roland” ploits of mythical 
heroes or historic kings. Such 
poems enjoyed high esteem in 
aristocratic circles and pene- 

_ trated all countries where feu- 

Roland at Roncesvalles dalism prevailed. Many of the 

From a thirteenth-century window of French epics dealt with Charle- 

stained glass in Chartres Cathedral. At the __ _i i • _•_ np-i 

right Roland sounding his horn; at the left ma § ne and hlS rel § n - The 
Roland endeavoring to break his sword oldest and at the Same time 
Durendai. the finest of them is the Song 

of Roland. It tells how Roland, one of Charlemagne’s mighty 
warriors, fought against the Moors in Spain and how, over¬ 
come by numbers, he died gloriously on the field of battle, with 
his face to the enemy and a prayer on his lips that “sweet 
France” might never be dishonored. 

The greatest epic composed in Germany during the Middle 
Ages was the Nibelungenlied (“Song of the Nibelungs ”). It 

Nibelungen- centers about the hero Siegfried, a figure of romance 
and not of history. The name of the poet who 
compiled and probably wrote much of the Nibelungenlied is 
unknown, but his work has a place among German classics. 

1 A Romance language, closely related to French, and still spoken in the south of 
France. 



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The Legacy of the Middle Ages 323 

King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table v ±re also 
important figures in medieval literature. Arthur w< said to 
have reigned in Britain early in the sixth centun J 4 2urian 
and to have fought against the Anglo-Sax^ ^ ™ mances 
Whether he ever lived or not we do not known jV x ‘his Celtic king 
stands forth in the Arthurian romances as the model of chivalry. 
Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, one of the first books to 
be printed in England, contains many of the narratives from 
which Tennyson, in his Idylls of the King, and other modern 
poets have drawn their inspiration. 

If King Arthur was the ideal knight, Robin Hood was the 
ideal yeoman. According to the old English ballads this outlaw 
flourished in the second half of the twelfth century, Robin Hood 
when Henry II and Richard the Lionhearted ballads 
reigned over England. Robin Hood, with his merry men, 
leads an adventurous life in Sherwood Forest, engaging in feats 
of strength and hunting the king’s tall deer. Bishops, sheriffs, 
and gamekeepers are his only enemies. He has the greatest 
pity for the common people, and robs the rich to endow the 
poor. Courtesy, generosity, and love of fair play are some of 
the characteristics which made him a popular hero. The 
ballads about him were sung by country folk for hundreds of 
years. 


95. The Legacy of the Middle Ages 

The Middle Ages, as the term indicates, lie between ancient 
and modern times. They include only the history of western 
Europe. There was no medieval period in eastern Period of the 
Europe, where the Byzantine Empire survived un- Middle Ages 
til the middle of the fifteenth century and preserved part of the 
territory and some of the culture of old Rome. There was no 
medieval period in the Near East, which had come under the 
sway of the Moslem Arabs and later of Turks. Nor was there 
a medieval period in the Far East, for some of the darkest cen¬ 
turies of western Europe were the brightest centuries of India 
and China. 


3 2 4 


Medieval Civilization 


Ti ,£ \rly Middle Ages formed an era of turmoil, ignorance, 
and o' consequent upon the barbarian invasions. Italy, 

Divisions ox ^pain, Gaul, and Britain, while provinces of the 
the Middle man Empire, were far more advanced than for 

Ages se\ 1 hundred years after the “fall” of Rome. 

It required a long time for the Germans to settle in their new 
homes, to become thoroughly fused with the Romanized pro¬ 
vincials, and to absorb what remained of the old classical civili¬ 
zation. During this time the Roman Church worked among 
the barbarians, Christianizing them and providing them with 
higher standards of morals and culture. The Arabs introduced 
the culture of the Near East to Spain, Sicily, and southern Italy, 
whence it penetrated other parts of western Europe (§ 77). 
The crusades, which brought western Europe into contact with 
their fellow Christians at Constantinople and with the Moslems 
in Asia Minor and the Holy Land, were still another progressive 
force (§ 78). The later Middle Ages formed an era of more 
settled government, increasing knowledge, and steady improve¬ 
ment in almost every field of human activity. The intellectual 
life of Europe was “speeded up,” and the way was prepared for 
even more rapid progress in modern times. The medieval period 
thus presents to the historical eye not a level stretch of a 
thousand years, with mankind stationary, but rather first a 
downward and then an upward slope. 

We have now learned what were some of the things which the 
Middle Ages accomplished. They abolished slavery and began 
Work of the the extinction of serfdom. They developed nu- 
Middle Ages merous cities, with a flourishing industry and com¬ 
merce. They produced strong national states out of the chaos 
of feudalism. They revived the architectural art, which 
flowered in magnificent cathedrals. They founded great 
universities attended by thousands of students. They carried 
on the philosophy and science of the Greeks and made practical 
inventions of vast importance. They originated the various 
vernacular languages of Europe and created much fine literature 
both in poetry and prose. Such were some of the contributions 
of the Middle Ages to the modern world. 


The Legacy of the Middle Ages 


325 


Studies 

1. What parts of Europe were Christianized between 400 and 800, 
between 800 and 1100, and after 1100 (map between pages 268-269)? 

2. Trace on the map the boundary between the Greek and Roman Churches. 

3. “Medieval Europe was a camp with a church in the background.” 

Comment on this statement. 4. Mention some respects in which the 
Roman Church during the Middle Ages differed from any religious society 
at the present time. 5. Distinguish between the faith of the Church, the 
organization of the Church, and the Church as a. force in history. “The 
monks and the friars were the militia of the Church.” Comment on this 
statement. 6. Who is the present pope? When and by whom was he 
elected? In what city does he reside? What is his residence called? 
7. Show that the medieval serf was not a serf or a “hired man” or a tenant- 
farmer paying rent. 8. Why has the medieval city been called the “ birth¬ 
place of modern democracy”? 9. Compare the merchant guild with the 
modem chamber of commerce, and craft guilds with modern trade unions. 
10. Why was there no antagonism between labor and capital under the 
guild system? 11. Trace on the map (facing page 256) the chief land 
and water routes between Europe and Asia during the Middle Ages. 
12. Show that Venice in medieval times was the seaport nearest the heart of 
commercial Europe. 13. Distinguish between the Romanesque and 
Gothic styles of architecture. 14. Compare the ground plans of a Greek 
temple (page 195), a Roman basilica (page 198), and a Gothic cathedral 
(page 299). 15. Contrast a Gothic cathedral with a Greek temple, partic¬ 

ularly in regard to size, height, support of the roof, windows, and decorative 
features. 16. Look up on the map (between pages 268-269) the following 
places where Gothic cathedrals are found: Canterbury, York, Salisbury, 
Reims, Amiens, Chartres, Cologne, Strasbourg, Burgos, Toledo, and 
Milan. 17. Compare medieval with modern universities, noting both 
resemblances and differences between them. 18. Look up the original 
(astrological) meaning of the words “jovial,” “saturnine,” “mercurial,” 
“contemplate,” and “consider.” 19. Why was Friday regarded as an 
especially unlucky day? 20. Show how Latin served as an international 
language in the Middle Ages. 21. What is meant by saying that “ French 
is a mere patois of Latin”? 22. Trace on the map (facing page 320) the 
language frontier between Romance and Teutonic peoples. 


CHAPTER XI 


THE TRANSITION TO MODERN TIMES 


96. Revival of Learning and Art 


The French word Renaissance means Rebirth or Revival. 
The word is particularly applied to the rebirth or revival of 
The man’s interest in the learning and art of classical 

Renaissance antiquity. The beginnings of the Renaissance 
go back to the fourteenth century; the movement culminated 
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Italy was its original 
home. There it first appeared, there it found widest acceptance, 
and there it reached the highest development. From Italy 
the Renaissance spread beyond the Alps and made the round of 
western Europe. 

Italy was a land particularly favorable to the growth of 
literature and the arts. The great cities of Milan, Pisa, Genoa, 
Italian cities Florence, Venice, and many others had early suc- 
oftheRenais- ceeded in throwing off their feudal burdens and 
had become independent, self-governing commu¬ 
nities. Democracy flourished in them, as in the old Greek city- 
states. Noble birth counted for little; a man of ability and 
ambition might rise to any place. The fierce party conflicts 
within their walls stimulated mental activity and helped to 
make life full, varied, and intense. Their widespread trade 
and thriving manufactures made them prosperous. Wealth 
brought leisure, bred a taste for luxury and the refinements of 

1 Webster, Readings in Early European History, chapter xlii, “A Scholar of the 
Renaissance”; chapter xliii, “Renaissance Artists”; chapter xliv, “The Travels 
of Marco Polo”; chapter xlv, “The Aborigines of the New World”; chapter xlvi, 
“Martin Luther and the Beginning of the Reformation”; chapter xlvii, “England 
in the Age of Elizabeth.” 

326 


Revival of Learning and Art 


327 


life, and gave means for the gratification of that taste. People 
wanted to have about them beautiful pictures, statuary, furni¬ 
ture, palaces, and churches; and they rewarded richly the 
artists who could produce such things. It is not without sig¬ 
nificance that the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance was 
democratic, industrial, and wealthy Florence. 



House or Jacques Cceur, Bourges 


Jacques Cceur, born about 1400, was one of the great financiers and merchants of his day, 
and an organizer of French commerce. His house at Bourges is an admirable example of 
Gothic domestic architecture. 

Knowledge of the classics did not entirely disappear in western 
Europe after the barbarian invasions. The monastery and 
cathedral schools of the Middle Ages had nourished Renewed in _ 
devoted students of ancient books. The Benedic- terest in the 
tine monks labored zealously in copying the works classics 
of pagan as well as Christian authors. The rise of universities 
made it possible for the student to pursue a fairly extended 
course in Latin literature at more than one institution of learn¬ 
ing. Reverence for the classics finds constant expression in the 
















328 The Transition to Modern Times 


writings of the Italian poet Dante (1265-1321), whose Divine 
Comedy , describing an imaginary visit to hell, purgatory, and 
paradise, is a literary masterpiece. Petrarch (1304-1374) did 
much to spread a knowledge of Latin authors. He traveled 


widely in Italy, 
France, and other 
countries, search¬ 
ing everywhere for 
ancient manu¬ 
scripts and em¬ 
ploying copyists 



M to transcribe those 
5 which he disco v- 
ered or borrowed. 


Renewed interest 
in the literature of 
Greece dates from 
the fifteenth cen¬ 
tury, when the 


Manor House, in Shropshire, 
England 

Built in the twelfth century. 


advance of the Ottoman Turks, resulting in the capture of 
Constantinople (§ 79), sent a stream of Greek exiles into 
Italy. Some of them were learned men, and their conver¬ 
sation and lectures greatly stimulated the study of Greek in the 
West. 

The languages and literatures of ancient Greece and Rome 
opened up a new world of thought and fancy to scholars. They 
The were delighted by the fresh, original, and liberal 

“ humanities” ideas which they discovered in the pages of Homer, 
Plato, Cicero, and other ancient writers. The study of the 
classics before long gained an entrance into university courses, 
and from the universities descended to the lower schools. 
Greek and especially Latin — the “humanities” — still hold 
a place in modern systems of education. 

Gothic architecture, with its pointed arches, flying buttresses, 
and traceried windows, never struck deep roots in Italy. The 
architects of the Renaissance went back to Greek temples and 
Roman domed buildings for their models, just as the hu- 


DANTE SHAKESPEARE 

After the death mask. From the copper-plate engraved by Martin Droeshout for the 

First Folio edition of Shakespeare’s works in 1623. 














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Revival of Learning and Art 


329 


manists went back to Greek and Latin literature. Long rows 
of Ionic or Corinthian columns, spanned by round arches, be¬ 
came again the prevailing architectural style. 

r r ^ J Architecture 

Perhaps the most important feature of Renaissance 
architecture was the use of the dome for the roofs of churches. 
The majestic cupola of St. Peter’s at Rome has become the 
parent of many domed structures in the Old and in the New 
World. 1 Architects, however, did not limit themselves to 
planning churches. The magnificent palaces of Florence, as 
well as some of those in Venice, are monuments of the Renais¬ 
sance era. 

The development of architecture naturally stimulated other 
arts. Italian sculptors began to copy the ancient bas-reliefs 
and statues pre- „ , x 

Sculpture 

served m Rome 
and other cities. The greatest 
of Renaissance sculptors was 
Michelangelo (1475-1564). 

Though a Florentine by birth, 
he lived for most of his life in 
Rome. Michelangelo also won 
fame in architecture and paint¬ 
ing. The dome of St. Peter’s 
was finished after his designs, 
while the frescoes on the ceiling 
of the Sistine Chapel in the 
Vatican display his genius as a 
painter. 

Italian painting began in the 
service of the Church and long 
remained religious 
in character. Art¬ 
ists usually chose subjects from the Bible or the lives of the 
saints. They did not trouble themselves to secure correctness of 
costume, but painted ancient Jews, Greeks, and Romans in the 

1 For instance, the Invalides in Paris, St. Paul’s in London, and the Capitol at 
Washington. 



Painting 


Desiderius Erasmus 

Louvre, Paris 

A portrait by the German artist, Hans 
Holbein the Younger (1497-1543). Probably 
an excellent likeness of Erasmus. 







330 


The Transition to Modern Times 


garb of Italian gentlemen. Many of their pictures were frescoes, 
that is, the colors were mixed with water and applied to the 
plaster walls of churches and palaces. After the process of 
mixing oils with the colors was discovered, pictures on wood or 
canvas (easel paintings) became common. Italian painters ex¬ 
celled in portraiture. They were less successful with landscapes. 
A list of the “Old Masters” of Italian painting always includes 
the names of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Titian. 

Italy had fostered the revival of learning by recovering the 
long-buried treasures of the classics and by providing means 
Revival of f° r their study. Scholars in Germany, France, 
learning be- and England continued the intellectual movement 
yond Italy anc [ g ave w jd eS p reac [ currency. The foremost 
of these scholars was Erasmus (1466-1536), a Hollander. His 
travels and extensive correspondence brought him in touch with 
many learned men of the day. The most important achieve¬ 
ment of Erasmus was an edition of the New Testament in the 
original Greek, with a Latin version. This work led to a better 
understanding of the New Testament and also facilitated trans¬ 
lation of the Scriptures into the modern European languages. 

Italian architects found a cordial reception in France, Spain, 
the Netherlands, and other countries, where they introduced 
Revival of Renaissance styles of building and ornamentation, 
art beyond The celebrated palace of the Louvre in Paris, 
Italy which is used to-day as an art gallery and museum, 

dates from the sixteenth century. Renaissance sculpture also 
spread beyond Italy and throughout Europe. Painters in 
northern countries at first followed Italian models, but after¬ 
ward produced masterpieces of their own. 


97. Geographical Discovery 

The age of the Renaissance was also marked by a revival of 
A “ geograph- t ^ Le exploring spirit on the part of European peo- 
icai Renais- pies. In consequence, new routes to the Far East 
were discovered, and the American continents, pre¬ 
viously unknown, were opened up to colonization. Europe 
began to expand into a Greater Europe beyond the ocean. 


Geographical Discovery 331 


The Greeks and Romans had become familiar with a large 
part of Europe and Asia (§ 61), but much of their learning 
was either forgotten or perverted during the early Medieval 
Middle Ages. Even the wonderful discoveries of ignorance of 
the Northmen in the North Atlantic gradually s e °s ra P h y 
faded from memory. The Arabs, whose conquests and com¬ 
merce spread over so much of the Orient, far surpassed the 
Christian peoples of Europe in knowledge of the world. 

The crusades first extended geographical knowledge by foster¬ 
ing pilgrimages and missions in Oriental lands (§78). Nu- 


The Polos 
in the East, 

1271-1295 



Geographical Monsters 

From an early edition of Sir John Mandeville’s 
Travels. Shakespeare ( Othello , I, iii, 144-145) refers 
to 

“ The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads 
Do grow beneath their shoulders.” 


merous mer¬ 
chants also vis¬ 
ited the East. 

Among them were the Ve¬ 
netians, Nicolo and Maffeo 
Polo, and Nicolo’s son, 

Marco. The Polos made 
an adventurous journey 
through the heart of Asia 
to the court of Kublai Khan 
at Cambuluc (now Peking) 
in China. The Mongol 
ruler, who seems to have 
been anxious to introduce 

Christianity and European culture among his people, received 
them in a friendly manner, and they gained much wealth by trade. 
Marco entered the Khan’s service and went on several expedi¬ 
tions to distant parts of the Mongol realm. Many years passed 
before Kublai would allow his useful guests to return to Europe. 
When they reached Venice after an absence of twenty-four 
years, their relatives were slow to recognize in them the long- 
lost Polos. 1 

The story of the Polos, as written down at Marco’s dictation, 
became one of the most popular works of the Mid- Marco 
die Ages. In this book people read of far Cathay Polo>s book 
(China), with its wealth, its huge cities, and swarming population; 


1 For Marco Polo’s route see the map facing page 256. 



33 2 


The Transition to Modern Times 


of mysterious and secluded Tibet; of Burma, Siam, and Cochin- 
China, with their palaces and pagodas; of the East Indies, famed 
for spices; of Ceylon, abounding in pearls; and of India, little 
known since the days of Alexander the Great. Even Cipango 
(Japan) Marco described from hearsay as an island whose 
inhabitants were civilized, and so rich in gold that the royal 



Embarkation of the Polos at Venice 

From a manuscript in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. 


palace was roofed and paved with that metal. The accounts 
of these countries naturally made Europeans more eager than 
ever to reach the East. 

The needs of commerce largely account for early exploring 

voyages. Eastern spices — cinnamon, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, 

Commercial an d ginger — were used more freely in medieval 

motive for times than now, when people lived on salt meat 

exploration , . . T _ 

during the winter and salt fish during Lent. Even 

wine, ale, and medicines had a seasoning of spices. Besides 









Geographical Discovery 


333 


spices, all kinds of precious stones, drugs, perfumes, gums, dyes, 
and fragrant woods came from the East. Since the time of the 
crusades these luxuries, after having been brought overland 
or by water to Mediterranean ports, had been distributed by 
Italian and German merchants throughout Europe (§ 88). 



The Hereford Map, 1280 a.d. 

This map shows the earth as a circular disk, with the ocean ‘ surrounding it. Paradise lies 
on the extreme east; Jerusalem is at the center; and below it is the Mediterranean. 


Two other European peoples — the Portuguese and Spaniards 
now appeared as competitors for this profitable Oriental trade. 
The Mediterranean being closed to them by the naval power of 
Venice, they tried to find an all-water route to the Indies, either 
around Africa into the Indian Ocean or directly across the 
Atlantic. The Portuguese were the first in the field. 

The genius of Dom Henriques, more familiarly known in 















334 


The Transition to Modern Times 


history as Prince Henry the Navigator, opened the way ocean- 
wards for Portugal. The son of a Portuguese king, he gave up 
Prince Henry a m ili tar y career and for more than forty years 
the Navigator, devoted his wealth, learning, and enthusiasm 
1394 1460 to geographical discovery. Under his direction 
better maps were made, the compass was placed on vessels, 
and seamen were instructed in all the nautical knowledge of 



the time. Prince Henry then dispatched expedition after ex¬ 
pedition southward to explore the African coast. 

The Portuguese began by rediscovering the Madeira Islands 
and the Azores, first visited by Europeans in the fourteenth 
Exploration of centui y but afterward forgotten. Then they turned 
the African southward along the uncharted African coast, 
toward waters which no keel had broken since 
the time of the Phoenicians (§25). Cape Bojador, the pre¬ 
vious boundary of the unknown, was passed by one of Prince 





































Geographical Discovery 


335 


Da Gama’s 
voyage, 

1497-1498 


Henry’s captains in 1434. Eleven years after another sailor 
got as far as Cape Verde, or “ Green Cape,” so called because 
of its luxurious vegetation. Later voyages brought the Portu¬ 
guese to Sierra Leone, then to the great bend in the African 
coast formed by the Gulf of Guinea, then across the equator, 
and at length to the mouth of the Congo. In 1487 Bartholomew 
Diaz rounded the southern extremity of Africa. The story 
goes that he named it the Cape of Storms, and that the king of 
Portugal, recognizing its impor¬ 
tance as a stage on the route to 
the East, rechristened it the Cape 
of Good Hope. 

Another Portuguese mariner, 

Vasco da Gama, reached India. 

He set sail from Lis¬ 
bon with four tiny 
ships and after leav¬ 
ing the Cape Verde Islands made 
a wide sweep into the South At¬ 
lantic. Da Gama doubled the 
Cape of Good Hope in safety, 
skirted the eastern shore of 
Africa, and at length secured the 
services of an Arab pilot to guide 
him across the Indian Ocean. 

In 1498 he arrived at Calicut, 
an important commercial city 
on the southwest coast of In¬ 
dia. When Da Gama returned 

to Lisbon, he brought back a cargo which repaid sixty times 
the cost of the expedition. The Portuguese king received him 
with high honor and created him Admiral of the Indies. 

Six years before Vasco da Gama cast anchor in the harbor of 
Calicut, another bold sailor, seeking the Indies by a western 
route, accidentally discovered America. It does The globu- 
not detract from the glory of Columbus to show lar theory 
that the way for his discovery had been long in preparation. 



Vasco da Gama 

From a manuscript in the British 
Museum. 



336 The Transition to Modern Times 





The ideas of European geographers in the period just preceding the discovery of America 
are represented on a map, or rather a globe, which dates from 1492. It was made by a Ger¬ 
man navigator, Martin Behaim, for his native city of Nuremberg, where it is still preserved. 
Behaim shows the mythical island of St. Brandan, lying in mid-ocean, and beyond it Cipango, 
the East Indias, and Cathay. The outlines of North America and South America here shown, 
do not appear, of course, on the original globe. 

In the first place, the theory that the earth is round had been 
familiar to the Greeks and Romans, and to educated men even 
in the darkest period of the Middle Ages. The awakening of in¬ 
terest in Greek science, as a result of the Renaissance, called 
renewed attention to the statements regarding the sphericity of 
the earth by Ptolemy and other ancient geographers (§ 61). 

In the second place, men had long believed that west of 
Europe, beyond the Strait of Gibralter, lay mysterious lands. 
This notion first appears in the writings of the Greek philos- 



























Geographical Discovery 337 

opher, Plato, who repeats an old tradition concerning 
Atlantis. According to Plato, Atlantis had been an island, 
continental in size, but thousands of years before Myths of 
his time it had sunk beneath the sea. Medieval Atlantic 
writers believed this story and found support islands 
for it in traditions of other western islands, such as the Isles 
of the Blest, where Greek heroes went after death, and the 
Welsh Avalon, whither King Arthur, after his last battle, 
was borne to heal his 
wounds. A popular 
legend of the Middle 
Ages also described 
the visit made by St. 

Brandan, an Irish 
monk, to the “prom- 
isedlandof the saints,” 
an earthly paradise far 
out in the Atlantic. 

St. Brandan’s Island 
was marked on early 
maps, and voyages in The “Santa Maria,” Flagship of Columbus 

Search of it were some- After the model reproduced for the Columbian Exposition 
. at Chicago, 1893. 

times undertaken. 

All know the story of the first voyage of Columbus. When 
he started out, he firmly believed that a journey of only four 
thousand miles would bring him to Cipango and First voyage 
realms of the Great Khan of Cathay. The of Columbus, 
error was natural enough, for Ptolemy had reckoned 1492 
the earth’s circumference to be about one-sixth less than it is, 
and Marco Polo had given an exaggerated idea of the distance 
to which Asia extended toward the east. The name West 
Indies, applied to the islands discovered by Columbus, still 
remains as a testimony to this error. 

Shortly after the return of Columbus from his first voyage, 
Pope Alexander VI, in response to a request by Ferdinand and 
Isabella, issued several bulls granting these sovereigns exclu¬ 
sive rights over the newly discovered lands. In order that 








338 The Transition to Modern Times 


the Spanish possessions should be clearly marked off from those 
of the Portuguese, the pope laid down an imaginary line of de- 
The Demar- mar cation in the Atlantic, three hundred miles west 
cation Line, of the Azores and the Cape Verde Islands. All 
new discoveries west of the line were to belong to 
Spain and all those east of it, to Portugal. 1 This arrangement, 
which excluded France, England, and other European countries 
from the New World, could not be long maintained. 

The Demarcation Line had a good deal to do in bringing about 
the first voyage around the globe. So far no one had yet realized 
Cir umnav dream of Columbus to reach the lands of spice 

gation of the an d silk by sailing westward. Ferdinand Magellan, 
I52^ e> 1519 a Portuguese navigator in the service of Spain, 
believed that the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, lay 
within the Spanish sphere of influence and that a route to 
them could be found through some strait at the southern end 
of South America. The Spanish ruler, Charles I, 2 grandson 
of the Isabella who had supported Columbus, looked with favor 
upon Magellan’s ideas and provided a fleet of five vessels for the 
undertaking. After exploring the eastern coast of South 
America, Magellan came at length to the strait which now bears 
his name. He sailed boldly through this strait into an ocean 
called by him the Pacific, because of its peaceful aspect. A 
voyage of ninety-eight days across the Pacific brought him to 
the Marianas Islands. Magellan then proceeded to the Philip¬ 
pines, where he was killed in a fight with the natives. His 
men, however, managed to reach the Moluccas. A single 
ship, the Victoria, carried back to Spain the few sailors who had 
survived the hardships of a journey lasting nearly three years. 

Magellan’s voyage marks an epoch in geographical discovery. 
It proved that America, at least on the south, had no con¬ 
nection with Asia, and that the western sea-route to the Indies 
really existed. Furthermore, it revealed the enormous extent 


1 In 1494 the Demarcation Line was shifted about eight hundred miles farther to 
the west. Six years later, when the Portuguese discovered Brazil, that country was 
found to lie within their sphere of influence. See the map between pages 342-343. 

2 Later known as the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. 


The American Indians 


339 


of the Pacific Ocean and led to the discovery of many large 
islands in the East Indies. Men now knew of a certainty that 
the earth is round, and in the distance covered by Results of the 
Magellan they had a rough approximation as to its tircumnaviga- 
size. The circumnavigation of the globe ranks tlon 
with the discovery of the sea-routes to the Indies and to America 
among the most significant events of history. Magellan stands 
beside Da Gama and Columbus in the company of great 
explorers. 

98. The American Indians 

The natives of America, whom Columbus called Indians, 
resemble Mongoloid peoples in some features, such as the reddish- 
brown complexion, the hair, uniformly coarse and Physical char- 
black, the high cheek-bones, and the short stature actenstics 
of many tribes. On the other hand, the large, aquiline nose, 
the straight eyes, never oblique, and the tall stature of some 
tribes are non-Asiatic characteristics. It seems safe to conclude 
that the Indians, whatever their origin, became thoroughly fused 
into a composite race during long centuries of isolation from 
the rest of mankind. 

The Indians, because of their isolation, had to work out by 
themselves many arts, inventions, and discoveries. They spoke 
over a thousand languages and dialects, and not Culture 
one has yet been traced outside of America. Their 
implements consisted of polished stone, occasionally of unsmelted 
copper, and in Mexico and Peru, of bronze. The use of iron 
was unknown to them. They cultivated Indian corn or maize, 
but lacked the other great cereals. They domesticated the dog, 
the llama, and the alpaca, but no other animals. They usually 
lived in clans and tribes, ruled by headmen or chiefs. Their 
religion probably did not involve a belief in a “ Great Spirit,” 
as is so often said, but rather recognized in all nature the abode 
of spiritual powers, mysterious and wonderful, whom man ought 
to approach by prayers and sacrifices. Most of the American 
Indians were not savages, but barbarians fairly well advanced 
in culture. 


340 


The Transition to Modern Times 


Indian culture attained its highest development in southern 

Mexico and Central America, especially among the Mayas of 

Yucatan, Guatemala, and Honduras. The re- 
The Mayas . . f . . . . . 

mams of their cities — the Nmevehs and Baby- 

Ions of the New World — lie buried in the tropical jungle, where 

Europeans first saw them four hundred years ago. The tern-. 



pies, shrines, altars, and statues in these ancient cities show that 
the Mayas had made much progress in the fine arts. They 
knew enough astronomy to frame a solar calendar of three 
hundred and sixty-five days, and enough mathematics to 
employ numbers exceeding a million. The writing of the Mayas 
was at least occasionally phonetic. Pictures, which stood for 
objects or ideas, were being displaced by symbols for the sounds 







The American Indians 


34i 


The Aztecs 


of words and syllables. When, if ever, their hieroglyphs shall 
have been completely deciphered, we shall learn much more 
about this gifted people. 

The so-called Aztecs were 
an Indian people who came 
down from the 
north and estab¬ 
lished themselves on the 
Mexican plateau. Here they 
formed a confederacy of many 
tribes ruled over by a sort 
of king, whose capital was 
Tenochtitlan, on the site of 
the present city of Mexico. 

The Aztecs seem to have bor¬ 
rowed much of their art, 
science, and knowledge of 
writing from their Maya 
neighbors. They built houses 
and temples of stone or sun- 
dried brick, constructed aque¬ 
ducts, roads, and bridges, ex¬ 
celled in the dyeing, weaving, 
and spinning of cotton, and 
made most beautiful orna¬ 
ments of silver and gold. 

They worshipped many gods, 
to whom the priests offered 
prisoners of war as human 
sacrifices. 

The lofty table-lands of the 

Andes were also the seat of an advanced Indian culture. 

The greater part of what is now Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, 

and northern Chile came under the sway of _ 

The Incas 

the Incas, the “ people of the sun. The Inca 

power centered in the Peruvian city of Cuzco, and on the 

shores of Lake Titicaca, which lies twelve thousand feet 



A Maya Figurine 

Found in 1903 in the Mexican state of Vera 
Cruz and now in the U. S. National Museum 
at Washington. It is about 6 \ inches in height 
and 3§ inches in diameter at the base. The 
upper part represents a human head. Part of 
the face is covered by a mask-like device, which 
extends down over the chest like a beard. The 
lower part of the stubby figure bears a general 
resemblance to a bird, and the bird-form is 
further emphasized by wings at the sides. 
This little idol doubtless represents a bird-man 
deity. It is covered with Maya glyphs. These 
embody the earliest date yet determined in 
America, a date which corresponds to 100 b . c . 


342 


The Transition to Modern Times 



above sea-level. The Incas displayed 


Aztec Sacrificial Knife 


great skill in the 
manual arts; they 
were expert gold- 
smiths, silver¬ 
smiths, and pot¬ 
ters; while as 


British Museum, London Cultivators and 

Length, twelve inches. The blade is of yellow, opalescent pno .; n p Pr c ?nr- 

chalcedony, beautifully chipped and polished. The handle is ° J 

of light-colored wood carved in the form of a man masked with passed their EurO- 
a bird skin. Brilliant mosaic settings of turquoise, malachite, 

and shell embellish the figure. P ean COI\querorS. 


99. Colonial Empires 

The Portuguese, after Da Gama’s voyage, made haste to 
appropriate the wealth of the Indies. By the middle of the 
Portuguese sixteenth century they had acquired almost com- 
ascendancy plete ascendancy throughout southern Asia and 
m the East t he a dj ace nt islands. Their colonial empire in¬ 
cluded many trading coasts in Africa, Ormuz at the entrance 
to the Persian Gulf, the western coast of India, Ceylon, Malacca 
at the end of the Malay Peninsula, and various possessions in 
the Malay Archipelago. They also established commercial 
relations with China, and even with Japan. 

The Portuguese came to the East as the successors of the 
Arabs, who for centuries had conducted an extensive trade 
Portuguese on the Indian Ocean. Having dispossessed the 
trade mo- Arabs, the Portuguese took care to shut out all 
nopoly European competitors. Only their own merchants 

were allowed to bring goods from the Indies to Europe by the 
Cape route. Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, formed the chief 
depot for spices and other eastern commodities. The French, 
English, and Dutch came there to buy them and took the place 
of Italian merchants in distributing them throughout Europe. 

The colonial empire which the Portuguese built up in India 
and the East Indies collapsed during the seventeenth century 
Portugal before the attacks of the French, the English, and 

in America the Dutch. Their colonial empire in Brazil lasted 
until the nineteenth century, and their influence still endures 





























































































































































Colonial Empires 


343 


there, in spite of the breaking of political ties. The language, 
literature, and customs of Brazil are those of Portugal. It is 
a marvelous thing that this insignificant parent state, insignifi¬ 
cant in area, in natural resources, and in population, should have 
been transplanted, as it were, to the boundless spaces of the 
New World. 

The discoverers of the New World were naturally the pioneers 
in its exploration. The adventures of Ponce de Leon, who dis¬ 
covered Florida in 1513 , of Balboa, who sighted the Spanish 
Pacific in the same year, of Cortes, who overthrew ascendancy 
the Aztec power in Mexico, of Pizarro, who con- in the West 
quered the Incas of Peru, of De Soto, and of Coronado are 
familiar to every reader of American history. These men laid 
the foundations of the Spanish colonial empire. It included 
Florida, New Mexico, California, Mexico, Central America, the 
West Indies, and all South America except Brazil . 1 

The government of Spain administered its colonial dominions 
in the spirit of monopoly. As far as possible, it excluded 
French, English, and other foreigners from trading Spanish trade 
with Spanish America. It also discouraged ship- monopoly 
building, manufacturing, and even the cultivation of the vine 
and the olive, lest the colonists should compete with home 
industries. The colonies were regarded only as a workshop 
for the production of the precious metals and raw materials. 
This unwise policy partly accounts for the economic back¬ 
wardness of Mexico, Peru, and other Spanish-American coun¬ 
tries. 

The colonial empire of Spain on the American mainland lasted 
almost exactly three hundred years. During this time she gave 
her language, religion, law, political institutions, Spain in 
economic system, and intellectual life to hah the America 
New World. The Spanish colonial empire affords, therefore, 
a great historical example of the transmission of culture impe¬ 
rially, somewhat as imperial Rome spread Roman civilization 

1 The Philippines, which Magellan discovered in 1521, also belonged to Spain, 
though by the Demarcation Line these islands lay within the Portuguese sphere of 
influence. 


344 


The Transition to Modern Times 


throughout western Europe. The work of Spain, like that of 
Rome, endures. It has left an abiding impress on the millions 
of Spanish-speaking people who live between the Rio Grande 
and the Strait of Magellan. 

100. The Old World and the New 

The New World contained two virgin continents, rich in 
natural resources and capable of extensive colonization. The 
Expansion native peoples, comparatively few in number and 
of Europe barbarian in culture, could not offer much resistance 
to the explorers, missionaries, traders, and colonists from the Old 
World. The Spanish and Portuguese in the sixteenth century, 
followed by the French, English, and Dutch in the seventeenth 
century, repeopled America and brought to it European civil¬ 
ization. 

In the Middle Ages the Mediterranean and the Baltic had been 
the principal highways of commerce. The discovery of America, 
Shifting of followed immediately by the opening of the Cape 
trade routes route to the Indies, shifted commercial activity 
from these inclosed seas to the Atlantic Ocean. Venice, Genoa, 
Hamburg, Liibeck, and Bruges gradually gave way, as trading 
centers, to Lisbon and Cadiz, Bordeaux and Cherbourg, Ant¬ 
werp and Amsterdam, London and Liverpool. One may say, 
therefore, that the year 1492 inaugurated the Atlantic period of 
European history. 

The discovery of America revealed to Europeans a new 
source of the precious metals. The Spaniards soon secured 
Increased l ar g e quantities of gold by plundering the In¬ 
production dians of Mexico and Peru of their stored-up 

of the pre- wealth. The output of silver much exceeded 
cious metals 

that of gold, as soon as the Spaniards began to 
work the wonderfully rich silver mines of Potosf in Bolivia. 
It is estimated that, by the end of the sixteenth century, 
the American mines had produced at least three times as much 
gold and silver as had been current in Europe at the beginning 
of the century. 


The Old World and the New 


345 


The Spaniards could not keep this new treasure. Having few 
industries themselves, they were obliged to send it out, as fast 
as they received it, in payment for their imports of European 
goods. Spain acted as a huge sieve through which the gold 
and silver of America entered all the countries of c 
Europe. Money, now more plentiful, purchased quences of 
far less than in former times; in other words, the the enlarged 
prices of all commodities rose, wages advanced, money supply 
and manufacturers and traders had additional capital to use in 
their undertakings. The Middle Ages suffered from the lack 
of sufficient money 
with which to do 
business (§ 88); 
from the begin¬ 
ning of modern 
times the world 
has been better 
supplied with the 
indispensable me¬ 
dium of exchange. 

America was 
much more than 
a treasury of the 
precious metals. 

Many commodi¬ 
ties, hitherto unknown, soon found their way from the New 
World to the Old. Among these were maize, the potato, 
which, when cultivated in Europe, became the New com _ 
“bread of the poor,” chocolate and cocoa made modifies 
from the seeds of the cacao tree, Peruvian bark, lmported 
or quinine, so useful in malarial fevers, cochineal, the dye-woods 
of Brazil, and the mahogany of the West Indies. America also 
sent to Europe large supplies of cane-sugar, molasses, fish, 
whale-oil, and furs. These new American products became 
common articles of consumption and so raised the stand¬ 
ard of living in European countries. 

The Atlantic Ocean formed henceforth, not only the com- 



The Gold Mines of Potosi 

From a woodcut of 1555. 





346 


The Transition to Modern Times 


mercial, but also the political center of the world. The Atlantic- 
facing countries, first Portugal and Spain, then Holland, France, 
Political and England, became the great powers of Europe, 
effects of the Their trade rivalries and contests for colonial pos- 
discovenes sess i ons have been potent causes of European wars 
for the last four hundred years. 

The sixteenth century in Europe was the age of that revolt 
against the Roman Church called the Protestant Reformation. 



Ortelius was a great Flemish geographer of the sixteenth century. He issued in 1570 the 
first modem atlas, a collection of fifty-three maps of the world with an accompanying text in 
Latin. This work went through many editions. Ortelius shows a fairly accurate knowledge 
of the Old World, but his New World is very faulty in outline, and the supposed southern 
continent takes a prominent place on his map. 


During this period, however, the Church made her converts of 
the American Indians. What she lost of territory, wealth, and 
Effects of influence in Europe was offset by what she gained in 

the discov- America. Furthermore, the region now occupied 
enes upon by United States furnished in the seventeenth 

religion J . 

century an asylum from religious persecution, as 
was proved when Puritans settled in New England, Roman 
Catholics in Maryland, and Quakers in Pennsylvania. The 
vacant spaces of America offered plenty of room for all who 
would worship God in their own way. The New World became 
a refuge from the intolerance of the Old. 













The Protestant Reformation 


347 


101. The Protestant Reformation 

The Reformation has a place beside the revival of learning 
and art and geographical discovery among the Nature of 
movements ushering in modern times. It involved, the Reforma- 
as we shall learn, a decisive break with both the tlon 
teachings of the Roman Church and the authority of the 
Papacy. 

There were several causes of the Reformation. Politically, 
it expressed the opposition of European sovereigns to the secular 
authority wielded by the Church (§ 81 ). Having 

, . r V 1 • 1 • -11° Political and 

triumphed over feudalism, the sovereigns wished to economic 

bring the Church, as well, within their jurisdiction. causes of the 
. ... . i . . i Reformation 

They tried to restrict the privileges of ecclesiastical 
courts, to impose taxes on the clergy, as on their own subjects, 
and to dictate the appointment of bishops and abbots to office. 
The result was constant friction between Church and State in 
one European country after another. Economically, the Refor¬ 
mation voiced a protest, on the part of both upper and lower 
classes, against the increasing luxury and extravagance of the 
papal court (§ 83 ). The protest rang loudest in Germany, 
when there was no strong king to prohibit the drainage of money 
to Rome, as French and English rulers had done. 

The political and economic causes of the Reformation com¬ 
bined with those strictly religious in character. Thoughtful men 
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had criti- Religious 
cized the worldliness of the Church, as reflected in causes of the 
the lives of many of its officers, and had urged that Reformatlon 
even popes, cardinals, and bishops should imitate the poverty of 
the Apostles. Some reformers, such as John Wycliffe in England 
and John Huss in Bohemia, went much farther and demanded 
wholesale changes in Catholic belief and worship. The views 
of Wycliffe and Huss were now to be expressed in Germany dur¬ 
ing the sixteenth century by the real founder of the Reformation, 
Martin Luther. 

Luther was the son of a German peasant, who, by industry 
and frugality, had gained a small competence. Thanks to his 


348 


The Transition to Modern Times 


father’s self-sacrifice, Luther received a good education in the¬ 
ology and philosophy at the University of Erfurt. He took 
Martin the degrees of bachelor and master of arts and then 

Luther began to study law, but an acute sense of his sinful¬ 

ness and a desire to save his soul soon drove him into a monastery. 
A few years later Luther visited Rome, only to be shocked by the 
general laxity of life in the capital of the Papacy. After return¬ 
ing to Germany he became a professor of theology in the Uni¬ 
versity of Wittenberg, where his sermons and lectures attracted 
large audiences. 

Luther’s reforming career began with an attack upon the 
indulgence system as found in Germany. An indulgence is a 
The Ninety- letter of pardon relieving a truly penitent sinner 
five Theses from some or all of the penances (punishments) 
which the Church would otherwise impose upon him. Its 
benefits, according to Catholic teaching, are also applied to the 
souls of the dead in purgatory. The pope granted indulgences 
to crusaders, pilgrims, and to those who contributed money for a 
pious object, such as the erection of a church or a convent. Many 
German princes opposed this method of raising funds for the 
Church, because it took so much money out of their dominions. 
Luther condemned it on religious grounds, pointing out that 
common people, who could not understand the Latin in which 
indulgences were written, often thought that they wiped away 
the penalties of sin, even without true repentance. Luther 
also denied the efficacy of indulgences for souls in purgatory. 
These and other criticisms were set forth by him in ninety-five 
theses or propositions, which he offered to defend against all 
opponents. In accordance with the custom of medieval scholars, 
Luther posted the theses on the door of the church at Wittenberg, 
where all might see them. They were composed in Latin, but 
were at once translated into German, printed, and spread broad¬ 
cast over Germany. Their effect was so great that before long 
the granting of indulgences in that country almost ceased. 

The pope, at first, had paid little attention to the controversy 
about indulgences, declaring it a “mere squabble of monks,” 
but he now issued a bull against Luther, ordering him to recant 


The Protestant Reformation 


349 


within sixty days or be excommunicated. The papal bull did 
not frighten Luther or withdraw from him popular support. 
He burnt it in the market square of Wittenberg, in x>i et 0 f 
the presence of a concourse of students and towns- Worms ' 1521 
folk. This dramatic action deeply stirred all Germany. The 
pope then urged the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, to put 



Worms Cathedral 


The old German city of Worms possesses in the Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul one of the 
finest Romanesque structures in Europe. The exterior, with its four round towers, two large 
domes, and a choir at each end, is particularly imposing. The cathedral was mainly built in 
the twelfth century. 


Luther under the ban of the empire. Charles was willing to 
comply, but the German princes insisted that Luther must not 
be condemned unheard. Accordingly, Luther was summoned 
before a great assembly (Diet) of princes and ecclesiastical dig¬ 
nitaries at Worms. Here he refused to retract anything he had 
written, unless his statements could be shown to contradict the 
Bible. “It is neither right nor safe to act against conscience,” 
Luther said. “God help me. Amen.” 

The Diet of Worms proclaimed Luther a heretic and outlaw, 









35 ° 


The Transition to Modern Times 


formed 
Religion ” 


and the pope excommunicated him. The support of powerful 
friends enabled him, however, to defy both pope and emperor 
Luther’s as long as he lived. He made a German trans¬ 
leadership lation of the Bible, which the printing press soon 
multiplied in thousands of copies, composed many fine hymns 
and a catechism, flooded the country with pamphlets against the 
Roman Church, and wrote innumerable letters to his followers. 
Luther became in this way the leader of the German Ref¬ 
ormation. 

The Reformation in Germany made a wide appeal. To 
patriotic Germans it seemed a revolt against a foreign power — 
The “ Re- the Italian Papacy. To men of pious mind it 
offered the attractions of a simple faith based 
directly on the Bible. Worldly-minded princes 
saw in it an opportunity to despoil the Church of lands and 
revenues. Luther’s teachings, accordingly, found acceptance 
among many people. Priests married, monks left their monas¬ 
teries, and the “Reformed Religion” took the place of Roman 
Catholicism in most parts of northern and central Germany. 
South Germany, however, did not fall away from the Papacy 
and has remained Roman Catholic to the present time. 

Luther’s doctrines also spread into Scandinavian lands. 
The rulers of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden closed the mon- 
Lutheranism asteries and compelled the Roman Catholic bishops 
in Scandi- to surrender ecclesiastical property to the Crown. 

Lutheranism became henceforth the official religion 
of these three countries. 

The Reformation in Switzerland began with Huldreich 
Zwingli. He was the contemporary, but not the disciple, of 
Huldreich Luther. From his pulpit in the cathedral of Zurich, 
Zwmgli Zwingli proclaimed the Scriptures as the sole guide 
of faith and denied the supremacy of the pope. Many of the 
Swiss cantons accepted his teaching and broke away from 
obedience to Rome. 

Another founder of Protestantism was the Frenchman, John 
Calvin. His Institutes of the Christian Religion set forth in 
orderly, logical manner the main principles of Protestant 


MARTIN LUTHER JOHN CALVIN 

After a portrait made in 1526 by Lucius After an old print. 

Cranach the Elder. 




«• 



































































■ 




















































































































































. 





The Protestant Reformation 


35i 


John Calvin 


theology. He also translated the Bible into French and wrote 
commentaries on nearly all the Scriptural books. Calvin passed 
most of his life at Geneva in Switzerland. The 
men whom he trained there, and on whom he set 
the stamp of his stern, earnest, God-fearing character, spread 
Calvinism over a great part of Europe. It became in Holland 
and Scotland the prevail¬ 
ing type of Protestantism, 
and in France and in 
England it deeply affected 
the national life. The 
Puritans in the seven¬ 
teenth century carried Cal¬ 
vinism across the sea to 
New England, where it 
formed the dominant faith 
in colonial times. 

The Reformation in 
Germany and Switzerland 
started as a Beginning of 
national and the English 

i Reformation 

popular move¬ 
ment; in England it be¬ 
gan as the act of a des¬ 
potic sovereign, Henry VIII, the second king of the Tudor dynasty. 
He broke with the pope because the latter would not consent to his 
divorce from his queen, Catherine of Aragon, who was the aunt 
of the Holy Roman Emperor and Spanish monarch, Charles V. 
Henry VIII finally obtained the desired divorce from an English 
court, and in defiance of the papal bull of excommunication 
married a pretty maid-in-waiting, named Anne Boleyn. The 
king’s next step was to secure from Parliament a series of laws 
abolishing the pope’s authority in England. An Act of Su¬ 
premacy (1534) declared the English king to be “the only 
supreme head on earth of the Church of England,” with power 
to appoint all ecclesiastical officers and dispose of the papal 
revenues. The suppression of the monasteries and the ap- 



ZwiNGLI 

After a painting by Hans Asper. 







35 2 


The Transition to Modern Times 


propriation of their wealth for himself and his favorites soon 
followed this legislation. While Henry VIII thus separated 
England from the control of the Papacy, he remained Roman 
Catholic in belief to the day of his death. 

The Reformation made rapid progress in England during the 
reign of Henry’s son and successor, Edward VI. The young 
king’s guardian allowed reformers from the Conti- 

Completion T . P 

of the Eng- nent to come to England, and the doctrines oi 

lish Refor- Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin were freely preached 
mation , ’ ° ’ .. . .... , 

there. In order that religious services might be 

conducted in the language of the people, Archbishop Cranmer 
and his co-workers prepared the Book of Common Prayer. It 
consisted of translations into noble English of various parts of 
the old Latin service books. With some changes, it is still 
used in the Church of England and the Protestant Episcopal 
Church of the United States. The short reign of Mary Tudor, 
daughter of Catherine of Aragon, was marked by a temporary 
setback to the Protestant cause. The queen prevailed on 
Parliament to secure a reconciliation with Rome. She also 
married her Roman Catholic cousin, Philip II of Spain, the son 
of Charles V. Mary now began a severe persecution of the 
Protestants. Many eminent reformers perished, among them 
Cranmer, the former archbishop. Mary died childless, after 
ruling about five years, and the crown passed to Anne Boleyn’s 
daughter, Elizabeth. Under Elizabeth Anglicanism again re¬ 
placed Roman Catholicism as the religion of England. 


102. The Catholic Counter Reformation 


The rapid spread of Protestantism soon brought about a 
Catholic Counter Reformation in those parts of Europe which 
The reform- remained faithful to Rome. The popes now turned 
mg pop es from the cultivation of Renaissance art and litera¬ 
ture to the defense of their threatened faith. They made 
needed changes in the papal court and appointed to ecclesiastical 
offices men distinguished for virtue and learning. This reform 
of the Papacy dates from the time of Paul III, who became pope 
in 1534. 


The Catholic Counter Reformation 353 

The most important agency of the Counter Reformation was 
the Society of Jesus, founded by a Spanish soldier and noble¬ 
man, Ignatius Loyola. The Jesuits, as their The Society 
Protestant opponents called them, formed an of J esus 
army of spiritual soldiers, living under the strictest obedience 
to their head, or general, and fighting for the Church against 
11 heretics. ’ ’ They served as preach¬ 
ers, confessors, teachers, and mis¬ 
sionaries. Their activities in Poland, 

Hungary, Bohemia, and other coun¬ 
tries did much to roll back the rising 
tide of Protestantism in Europe. 

The Jesuits also invaded the lands 
which the great maritime discov¬ 
eries had laid open to European 
enterprise. In India, China, the 
East Indies, the Philippines, Africa, 
and the two Americas their con¬ 
verts from heathenism were num¬ 
bered by hundreds of thousands. 

Another agency in the Counter 
Reformation was the great Church 
Council summoned by c n of 
Pope Paul III. The “i5«- 
council met at Trent, 1563 
on the borders of Germany and 
Italy. It continued, with inter¬ 
missions, for nearly twenty years. The Council of Trent made 
no essential changes in Roman Catholic doctrines, which re¬ 
mained as theologians had set them forth in the Middle Ages. 
It declared that the tradition of the Church possessed equal 
authority with the Bible and reaffirmed the supremacy of the 
pope over Christendom. The council also passed decrees for¬ 
bidding the sale of ecclesiastical offices and requiring bishops 
and other prelates to attend strictly to their duties. 

The council, before adjourning, authorized the pope to draw 
up a list of works which Roman Catholics might not read. 



St. Ignatius Loyola 


After the painting by Sanchez de 
Coello in the House of the Society of 
Jesus at Madrid. No authentic por¬ 
trait of Loyola has been preserved. 
Coello’s picture was made with the 
aid of a wax cast of the saint’s features 
taken after death. 






354 


The Transition to Modern Times 


This action did not form an innovation. The Church from 
an early day had condemned heretical writings. However, the 
The I d invention of printing, by giving greater currency to 
new and dangerous ideas, seemed to increase the 
necessity for the regulation of thought. The “ Index of Pro¬ 
hibited Books” still exists, and additions to the list are made 
from time to time. It was matched by the strict censorship 
of printing long maintained in Protestant countries. 

Still another agency of the Counter Reformation consisted of 
the Inquisition. This was a system of church courts for the 
The Inqui- discovery and punishment of heretics. Such 
sition courts had been set up in the Middle Ages. After 

the Council of Trent they redoubled their activity, especially 
in Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain. The Inquisition probably 
contributed to the disappearance of Protestantism in Italy. 
In the Netherlands, where it worked with great severity, it 
only aroused exasperation and hatred and helped to provoke 
a successful revolt of the Dutch people. The Spaniards, on the 
other hand, approved of the methods of the Inquisition and 
welcomed its extermination of heretics. It was not abolished in 
Spain until the nineteenth century. 


103. Results of the Reformation 

The Reformation was practically completed before the close 
of the sixteenth century. In 1500 the Roman Church embraced 
Extent of ah Europe west of Russia and the Balkan Peninsula. 

Protestant- By 1600 nearly half of its former subjects had 

renounced their allegiance. The greater part of 
Germany and Switzerland and all of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, 
Holland, England, Wales, and Scotland became independent of 
the Papacy. The unity of western Christendom, which had been 
preserved throughout the Middle Ages, thus disappeared and 
has not since been revived. 

Protestants agreed in substituting for the authority of popes 
and church councils the authority of the Bible. They went 
back fifteen hundred years to the time of the Apostles and 


Results of the Reformation 


355 


tried to restore what they believed to be apostolic Christianity. 
Hence they rejected such doctrines and practices „ 

..... Common 

as were supposed to have developed during the features of 
Middle Ages. These included belief in purgatory, Protestant- 
veneration of relics, invocation of saints, devotion 
of the Virgin, indulgences, pilgrimages, and the greater number 



of the sacraments. The Reformation also abolished the mo¬ 
nastic system and priestly celibacy. 

The denial of the authority of popes and Church councils led 
inevitably to differences of opinion among Protestants. There 
were various ways of interpreting that Bible to Divisions 
which they appealed as the rule of faith and con- among 
duct. Consequently, Protestantism split up into 
many sects or denominations, and these have gone on multiply¬ 
ing to the present day. Nearly all, however, are offshoots from 


















356 


The Transition to Modern Times 


The Refor¬ 
mation and 
freedom of 
thought 


the three main varieties of Protestantism (Lutheranism, Calvin¬ 
ism, and Anglicanism) which appeared in the sixteenth century. 

The break with Rome did not introduce religious liberty into 
Europe. Nothing was further from the mind of Luther, Calvin, 
and other reformers than the toleration of beliefs 
unlike their own. The early Protestant sects 
punished dissenters as zealously as the Roman 
Church punished heretics. Complete freedom of 
conscience and the right of private judgment in religion have 
been secured in most countries of Europe only within the last 
hundred years. 

The Reformation, however, did deepen the moral life of 
European peoples. The faithful Protestant or Roman Catholic 
The Refor- tried to show by his conduct that his particular 

mation and form of belief made for better living than any 

other faith. The impulse to higher standards of 
morality, which we owe to the Reformation, is still felt at the 
present day. 

Studies 


i. Distinguish and define the three terms, Renaissance, Revival of Learning, 
and Humanism. 2. “Next to the discovery of the New World, the 
recovery of the ancient world is the second landmark that divides us from 
the Middle Ages and marks the transition to modern life.” Comment on 
this statement. 3. Why did the Renaissance begin as an “Italian event” ? 
4. Why was the revival of Greek more important in the history of civilization 
than the revival of Latin? 5. Why did the classical scholar come to be 
regarded as the only educated man? 6. Compare the Hereford map 
(page 333) with the map of the world according to Homer (page 100). 
7. Compare the map of Ortelius (page 346) with the map of the world accord¬ 
ing to Ptolemy (page 190). 8. Why has Marco Polo been called the “Co¬ 

lumbus of the East Indies”? 9. How did Vasco da Gama complete the 
work of Prince Henry the Navigator? 10. Explain this statement: 
“The American isthmus was discovered because an Asiatic one existed; 
in trying to avoid Suez the early mariners ran afoul of Darien.” n. On 
an outline map indicate the voyages of discovery of Vasco da Gama, 
Columbus (first voyage), and Magellan. 12. Show that the three words 
“gospel, glory, and gold” sum up the principal motives of European colo¬ 
nization in the sixteenth century. 13. “The opening-up of the Atlantic to 
continuous exploration is the most momentous step in the history of man’s 
occupation of the earth.” Does this statement seem to be justified? 


Results of the Reformation 


357 


14. How did Lisbon in the sixteenth century become the commercial succes¬ 
sor of Venice ? 15. Why is Roman law followed in all Latin-American coun¬ 

tries? 16. Give three important reasons for the lessened influence of the 
Roman Church at the opening of the sixteenth century. 17. What is the 
historical origin of the name Protestant? 18. Why did the reformers in 
each European country take special pains to translate the Bible into the 
vernacular? 19. Why is the Council of Trent generally considered to be 
the most important Church council since that of Nicsea? 


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A Hornbook 

A child’s primer framed in wood and covered with a thin plate 
of transparent horn. It included the alphabet in small letters 
and in capitals, with vowel combinations and the Lord’s Prayer. 
This particular example was found at Oxford and is now in the 
Bodleian Library. 


























CHAPTER XII 


THE OLD RfiGIME IN EUROPE 1 
104. Absolutism and the Divine Right of Kings 

We studied in the preceding chapter some of the more im¬ 
portant changes in European society at the close of the 
The old Middle Ages. The Renaissance, geographical dis- 
Regime covery, exploration, and colonization, and the 

Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter Reformation all 
helped to complete the transition from the medieval to the 
modern world. These movements, we learned, took place in 
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Much that was medieval 
survived, however, into the seventeenth and eighteenth cen¬ 
turies, especially in political and economic life. Absolute 
monarchies claiming to rule by divine right, aristocracies in the 
possession of privileges and honors, the mass of the people 
excluded from any part in the government and burdened with 
taxes and feudal dues — such were some of the survivals of 
medievalism which formed the Old Regime. Let us examine it 
more closely. 

Most European states were absolute monarchies. Absolutism 
was as common then as democracy is to-day. The rulers of 


1 Webster, Readings in Modern European History, chapter i, " Characters and 
Episodes of the Great Rebellion”; chapter ii, "Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches” ; 
chapter iii, "English Life and Manners under the Restoration” ; chapter iv, "John 
Evelyn, the Diarist”; chapter v, "Louis XIV and His Court”; chapter vi, "A 
French Letter Writer of the Seventeenth Century”; chapter vii, “Memoirs of a 
German Princess”; chapter viii, “Letters of an English Nobleman”; chapter ix, 
“ Turkey and the Turks ”; chapter xv, "The England of Addison”; chapter xvi, 
“Goldsmith’s England”; chapter xvii, “The Methodist Revival”; chapter xviii, 
“The‘Wealth of Nations’”; chapter xix, "A ‘Philosophe’”; chapter xx, "France 
on the Eve of the Revolution.” 


358 


Absolutism and the Divine Right of Kings 359 

Europe, having triumphed over the feudal nobility of the Mid¬ 
dle Ages (§ 80), proclaimed themselves to be the sole source of 

authority. The middle and lower classes had no 

... . Absolutism 

real part m law-making, no representative assem¬ 
blies, and no constitutional safeguards against arbitrary power. 
The kings were everything; their subjects, nothing. 

Absolutism rested on a real and very ancient belief in the 
divinity of kings. The Chinese emperor was the “Son of 
Heaven.” The Egyptian Pharaoh was the “Son Divinity of 
of the Sun.” The Hebrew monarch was the Lord’s kin s s 
anointed. The Hellenistic rulers of the Near East and the 
Roman emperors received divine honors from their subjects. 
An element of holiness also attached to medieval sovereigns, 
who at their coronation were anointed with a magic oil, girt 
with a sacred sword, and given a supernatural banner. Even 
Shakespeare could speak of the divinity which “doth hedge a 
king.” 1 

This conception of the sacred character of royalty gave rise 
to the theory of divine right. Kings were held to rule, not by 
the choice or consent of their subjects, but by “the . 

. Divine right 

grace of God.” Providence, it was argued, had 
really ordained the State and placed over it a ruler whom it was 
a religious duty to obey and a sin to disobey. The theory of 
divine right thus contrasted sharply with our present-day no¬ 
tions of popular sovereignty. 

The general acceptance of absolutism and divine right meant 
that the interests of the monarchs received far more attention 
than those of their subjects. The result was that Dynastic 
the vanity, selfishness, or ambition of individual interests 
rulers and dynasties plunged Europe into one war after another. 
When peace came to be made, the monarchs paid scant heed to 
geographical, racial, or linguistic boundaries, but cut and pared 
countries “as if they were Dutch cheeses.” The idea, now so 
prevalent, that each people should determine its own destiny 
found little favor. 


1 Hamlet, IV, v, 123. 


360 


The Old Regime in Europe 


105. Privileged and Unprivileged Classes 

The feudal system had bequeathed as part of its heritage to 
modern Europe a system of class distinctions which honey- 
The First combed society. The highest place was occupied 

and Second by the clergy and nobility, who made up the First 
Estates and g econ( i Estates, respectively. These two 

privileged classes formed a very small minority of the popula¬ 
tion in any European country. 



The clergy 


Costumes of the French Orders 

After an old print. The cleric wears a robe and ornamented mantle; the noble, a suit of 
black silk and a cap adorned with plumes; the representative of the Third Estate, a simple 
black suit without gold buttons or plumed cap. 

Reverence felt by kings and lords for mother Church had 
dowered her representatives with rich and broad domains. In 
France, Spain, Italy, and those parts of Germany 
where Church property had not been confiscated 
by Protestants, the archbishops, bishops, abbots, and cardinals 
ruled like princes and paid few or no taxes to the government. 
These members of the higher clergy were recruited mainly from 
the noble families and naturally took the side of the absolute 
monarchs. The lower clergy, the thousands of parish priests, 
who came from the common people, just as naturally adopted 
the popular cause. They saw the abuses of the existing system 
and supported the demands for its reform. 



Privileged and Unprivileged Classes 361 


Great Britain is almost the only modern state where the 
nobility still keeps an important place in the national life. 
There are several reasons for this fact. In the British 
first place, British nobles are not numerous, be- nobles 
cause of the rule of primogeniture. The eldest son of a peer 
inherits his father’s title and estate; the younger sons are only 
commoners. In the second place, the social distinction of the 
nobility arouses little antagonism, because a peer is not bound 
to marry into another noble family but may take his wife from 
the ranks of commoners. In the third place, the nobility is from 
time to time enlarged through the creation of new peers, very 
often men who have distinguished themselves by their public 
services as generals or statesmen or by their contributions to 
science, art, or letters. This constant supply of new blood has 
helped to preserve the British aristocracy from becoming inactive 
and useless. Finally, nobles in Great Britain are taxed as are 
other citizens and are equally accountable to the laws. 

The situation was very different in most Continental countries. 
France, for example, supported as many as one hundred thou¬ 
sand nobles, for the French did not observe the rule French 
of primogeniture. All the sons of French nobles nobles 
inherited the father’s title and estate equally. The “ gentle 
birth ” of the nobles enabled them to monopolize the important 
offices in the government, the army, and the Church. They 
were also largely exempt from taxation. The nobles who 
lived on their country estates often took part in local affairs and 
felt an interest in the welfare of the peasantry, but those who 
led a fashionable existence at court, in attendance on the king, 
were ornamental rather than useful. Their luxury, idleness, and 
dissipation made them hateful in the sight of reformers. A critic 
of the French nobility declared, “ Through all the vocabulary 
of Adam, there is not such an animal as a duke or a count.” 

Such were the two privileged orders. Beneath them came the 
unprivileged order known as the Third Estate The Third 
in France. It consisted of three main divisions. Estate 

The middle class, or bourgeoisie, l included all those who were 


1 From French bourg, “town.’ 


362 


The Old Regime in Europe 


not manual laborers. Professional men, such as magistrates, 
lawyers, physicians, and teachers, together with bankers, manu- 
The facturers, wholesale merchants, and shopkeepers, 

“bourgeoisie” were bourgeois. The British middle class enjoyed 
representation in Parliament and frequently entered the nobility. 
The French bourgeoisie, on the contrary, could not hold the 
positions of greatest honor in the government. Though well 



educated and often wealthy, they were made to feel in every 
way their inferiority to the nobles. They added their voices, 
therefore, to those who demanded political liberty and social 
equality. 

The next division of the Third Estate included the artisans 
The living in the towns and cities. They were not very 

artisans numerous, except in Great Britain, France, western 

Germany, and northern Italy, where industry had reached a much 
higher development than elsewhere in Europe. 

The craft guilds, so characteristic of city life during the Middle 
Ages (§87), had begun to disappear in Great Britain, but still 
Survivals of maintained their importance on the Continent, 
the guild Each trade had its own guild, controlling methods 
of manufacture, quantity and quality of the article 
produced, wages, hours of labor, and number of workmen 
to be employed. The guilds tended more and more to be¬ 
come exclusive organizations. Membership fees were raised so 






Privileged and Unprivileged Classes 363 



London Tradesmen 

After a broadside of 1647 in the British Museum, London. 


high that few could afford to pay them, while the number of 
apprentices that a master might take was strictly limited. 
It also became increasingly difficult for journeymen to rise to the 
station of masters; they often remained wage-earners for life. 
The result was that the mass of artisans no longer participated 
in the benefits of the guild system. They therefore opposed it 
and sought its abolition. 






























364 


The Old Regime in Europe 


The last and by far the largest division of the Third Estate 
was that of the peasants. In Prussia, Austria, Hungary, Poland, 
The Russia, and Spain they were still serfs (§ 85). 

peasants They might not leave their villages or marry with¬ 
out their lord’s consent; their children must serve in his family 
for several years at a nominal wage; and they themselves had 
to work for a number of days each week on their lord’s land. 
Conditions were better in Italy and western Germany, though 
it was a Hessian prince who hired his subjects to Great Britain 



The French Peasant under Taille, Tax, and Corvee 

After an engraving of 1789 in the Hennin Collection, Paris. 


to fight as mercenaries in the American War of Independence. 
In France, serfdom still existed in only a few provinces. The 
great majority of the French peasants enjoyed complete free¬ 
dom, and many of them owned their own farms. 

But even the free peasants of France carried a heavy burden. 
The king imposed the hated land tax {taille), assessing a certain 
Survivals of amount on each village and requiring the money 
the manorial to be paid whether the inhabitants could afford 
it or not. Still more hated was the corvee, or forced 
labor exacted by the government from time to time on roads 







France under Louis XIV 


365 


and other public works. The clergy demanded tithes, which 
amounted to perhaps a thirteenth of the produce. The nobles 
levied various feudal dues for the use of oven, mill, and wine 
press, and tolls for the use of roads and bridges. The game 
laws were especially vexa¬ 
tious, because farmers were 
obliged to allow the game 
of neighboring lords to in¬ 
vade their fields and de¬ 
stroy the crops. It is not 
strange -that the peasants 
also formed a discontented 
class, anxious for any re¬ 
forms which would better 
their hard lot. 

106. France under Louis 
XIV 

France in the seven¬ 
teenth and eighteenth cen¬ 
turies fur- Bourbon 
nished a good dynasty 
example of an absolute 
monarchy supported by 
pretensions to divine right. 

That country had now 
come under Bourbon rulers, 
a dynasty which began with 
Henry Bourbon, king of 
Navarre. He mounted the 
French throne in 1589 as 

Henry IV, and his descendants reigned after him for more 
than two hundred years. 

The third Bourbon, Louis XIV (1643-1715), whose reign is 
the longest in European history, ranks among the 
most able of French monarchs. He was a man of 
handsome presence, slightly below the middle height, with a 



Louis XIV as the “ Sun King 


From a drawing made in 1653 for a court ballet in 
which Louis XIV took part. 


Louis XIV 



366 


The Old Regime in Europe 


prominent nose and abundant hair, which he allowed to fall 
over his shoulders. In manner he was dignified, reserved, 
courteous, and as majestic, it is said, in his dressing-gown as in 
his robes of state. A contemporary wrote that he would have 
been every inch a king, “even if he had been born under the 
roof of a beggar.” Louis possessed much natural intelligence, 
a retentive memory, and great capacity for work. It must be 
added, however, that his general education had been neglected, 
and that throughout his life he remained ignorant and super¬ 
stitious. Vanity formed a striking trait in the character of 
Louis. He accepted the most extravagant compliments and de¬ 
lighted to be known as the “Grand Monarch” and the “Sun 
King.” 

Louis gathered around him a magnificent court at Versailles, 
near Paris. Here a whole royal city, with palaces, parks, 
The French groves, terraces, and fountains, sprang into being 
coiirt at his order. The gilded salons and mirrored 

corridors of Versailles were soon crowded with members of the 
nobility. They now spent little time on their estates, preferring 
to remain at Versailles in attendance on the king, to whose 
favor they owed offices, pensions, and honors. The splendor 
of the French court cast its spell upon Europe. Every king 
and prince looked to Louis as the model of what a ruler should 
be and tried to imitate him. French language, manners, dress, 
art, and literature thus became the accepted standards of polite 
society in all civilized lands. 

The famous saying, “I am the State,” though not uttered 
by Louis, accurately expressed his conviction that in him were 
French embodied the power and greatness of France, 

absolutism Conditions in that country made possible his 
absolute government. Previous rulers and their ministers had 
labored with success to strengthen the authority of the Crown 
at the expense of the nobles and the commons. There was 
no Parliament to represent the nation and voice its demands. 
There was no Magna Carta, as in England (§ 80), to protect 
the liberties of the people by limiting the right of a ruler to 
impose taxes at will. The French, furthermore, did not have 



367 


Versailles 

The palace now forms a magnificent picture gallery and museum of French history; the park, with its fountains and ornamental shrubbery, is a place of 

holiday resort for Parisians. It is estimated that Louis XIV spent one hundred million dollars on the buildings and grounds. 





















































































































































































































































































































































































3 68 


The Old Regime in Europe 


independent law courts which could interfere with the king’s 
power of exiling, imprisoning, or executing his subjects. Abso¬ 
lutism thus became so firmly rooted in France that a revolution 
was necessary to overthrow it. 

Absolutism, as a principle of government, received its fullest 
justification in a famous work 1 written by Bossuet, a learned 
Bossuet on French bishop, for the instruction of Louis XIV’s 
absolutism son. a hereditary monarchy, declared Bossuet, is 
the most ancient and natural, the strongest and most efficient, 
of all forms of government. Royal power comes from God; 
hence the person of the king is sacred and it is sacrilege to con¬ 
spire against him. No one may rightfully resist the king’s 
commands; his subjects owe him obedience in all matters. To 
the violence of a king the people can only oppose respectful 
remonstrances and prayers for his conversion. A king, indeed, 
ought not to be a tyrant, but he can be one in perfect security. 
“As in God are united every perfection and virtue, so all the 
power of all the individuals in a community is united in the 
person of the king.” 

How unwise it may be to concentrate authority in the hands 
of one man is shown by the melancholy record of the wars of 
French Louis XIV. To make France powerful and gain 

militarism fame for himself, he plunged his country into a 
series of struggles from which it came out completely exhausted. 
Louis was served by excellent engineers and commanders, who 
developed siegecraft, improved artillery, and recruited, equipped, 
and provisioned larger bodies of troops than had ever before 
appeared on European battlefields. The use of distinctive 
uniforms for soldiers, the custom of marching in step, field 
hospitals, and ambulances were some of the innovations of 
this time. Louis dreamed of dominating all western Europe, 
but his aggressions provoked against him a constantly increasing 
number of allies, who in the end proved to be too strong even 
for the king’s able generals and fine armies. 

Four great wars filled a large part of Louis’ reign. The first 


1 La politique tiree de VEcriture Sainte. 


France under Louis XIV 


369 


three were undertaken to extend the dominions of France as 
far as the Rhine. That river in ancient times had separated 
Gaul and Germany, and Louis regarded it as a “ nat- Alsace and 
ural boundary” of France. He did secure several Lo rraine 
strips of territory to the east and northeast of France, particu¬ 
larly Alsace. The Alsatians, though of Teutonic extraction, in 
process of time consid¬ 
ered themselves French 
and lost all desire for 
union with any of the 
German states. The 
greater part of Lor¬ 
raine was not added to 
France until after the 
middle of the eighteenth 
century, during the 
reign of Louis’s suc¬ 
cessor. TheLorrainers, 
likewise, became thor¬ 
ough] y F r ench in f eeling. 

The fourth great war 
arose out of dynastic 
rivalries War of the 

and ambi- |^“ssion, 
tions. The 1701-1713 

king of Spain, who 
lacked children or broth¬ 
ers to succeed him, be¬ 
queathed his vast do¬ 
minions in Europe and 
America to one of Louis’s 

grandsons, in the hope that the French might be strong enough 
to keep them undivided. Louis accepted the inheritance, but 
other European rulers looked on with dismay at the prospect 
of so great an enlargement of France. A united Franco- 
Spanish empire would be too strong for its neighbors, would 
disturb the delicately adjusted “balance of power” between the 



“ Ridiculous Taste, or the Ladies’ 
Absurdity ” 

One of the many caricatures of the extravagant 
fashions in headdress of both sexes during the eight¬ 
eenth century. 




























37 o 


The Old Regime in Europe 


various countries. The result was the War of the Spanish 
Succession, in which France and Spain faced a Grand Alliance 
of England, Austria, Holland, Portugal, and several of the 
German principalities. Europe had never known before a war 
that concerned so many states and peoples. It continued for 
more than a decade, until the exhaustion of both sides led to 
the conclusion of the Peace of Utrecht in 1713. The Allies 
agreed to recognize Louis’s grandson as king of Spain and her 
colonies, on condition, however, that the Spanish and French 
crowns should never be united. Louis was allowed to keep 
the Continental territories acquired earlier in his reign, but he 
had to surrender to England various colonial possessions of 
France (§ 121). The war and the peace that followed it thus 
checkmated his ambitious design of becoming master of western 
Europe. 

The price of the king’s warlike policy was a heavy one. 
France paid it in the shape of famine and pestilence, excessive 
Position taxes, huge debts, and the impoverishment of the 
of France people. Louis, now a very old man, survived the 
Peace of Utrecht only two years. As he lay dying, he turned to 
his little heir 1 and said, “Try to keep peace with your neighbors. 
I have been too fond of war; do not imitate me in that, or in 
my too great expenditure.” 

107. Russia under Peter the Great 

The Russians at the opening of modern times seemed to be 
rather an Asiatic than a European people. Three hundred 
Romanov years of Mongol rule had isolated them from their 
dynasty Slavic neighbors and had interrupted the stream 
of civilizing influences which in earlier days flowed into Russia 
from the Byzantine Empire. Most of the Russians were 
ignorant, superstitious peasants, who lived secluded lives in 
small farming villages scattered over the plains and throughout 
the forests. Even the inhabitants of the towns lacked the ed¬ 
ucation and enlightened manners of the western peoples, whose 

1 His great-grandson, then a child of five years. The reign of Louis XV covered 
the period 1715-17 74. 



Russia under Peter the Great 371 


ways they disliked and whose religion, whether Catholicism or 
Protestantism, they condemned as heretical. Russia, in short, 
needed to be restored to Europe, and Europe needed to be intro¬ 
duced to Russia. This formed the special work of the Ro¬ 
manovs, a dynasty which began in 1613 with Michael Romanov. 
The family of tsars descended from him occupied the Russian 
throne until our own day. 1 
His grandson was the cele¬ 
brated Peter the Great (1689- 

1725)- 

Peter became sole tsar 
when only- seventeen years 
of age. An Peter the 
English con- Great 
temporary, who knew him 
well, described him as “a 
man of very hot temper, 
soon inflamed, and very 
brutal in his passion.” Af¬ 
ter a mutiny of his body¬ 
guard he edified the court 
by himself slicing off the 

heads of the culprits. In 

_ „ . . . Peter the Great 

order to quell opposition in 

his family, he had his wife whipped by the knout and ordered 
his own son to be tortured and executed. He was coarse, 
gluttonous, and utterly without personal dignity. Yet Peter 
could often be frank and good-humored, and he was as loyal 
to his friends as he was treacherous to his foes. Whatever his 
weaknesses, few men have done more than Peter to change the 
course of history, and few have better deserved the appella¬ 
tion of “the Great.” 

Peter began his work as a reformer by sending fifty young 
Russians of the best families to Venice, Holland, Europeaniza- 
and England, to absorb all they could of European tion of Russia 
ideas. He afterward came in person, traveling incognito as 

1 The last tsar, Nicholas II, abdicated in 1917. 










372 


The Old Regime in Europe 


“Peter Mikhailov” and making himself familiar with the arts 
and customs of western Europe. These he proceeded to intro¬ 
duce into Russia. The long Asiatic robes of Russian nobles 
had to give way to short German jackets and hose. Long 
beards, which the people considered sacred, had to be shaved, 
or else a tax paid for the privilege of wearing one. Women, 

previously kept in seclusion, 
were permitted to appear in 
public without veils and to 
mingle at dances and enter¬ 
tainments with men. A 
Russian order of chivalry 
was founded. The Bible 
was translated into the 
language of the people and 
sold at popular prices. 
Peter adopted the “ Julian 
calendar,” in place of the 
old Russian calendar, which 
began the year on the first 
of September, supposed to 
be the date of the creation. 
He also improved the Rus¬ 
sian alphabet by omitting 
some of its cumbersome 

letters and by simplifying others. 

Peter found in Russia no regular army; he organized one 
after the German fashion. The soldiers (except the mounted 
Recon- warriors known as Cossacks) were uniformed and 

struction of armed like European troops. He found no fleet; 

he built one, modeled upon that of Holland. He 
opened mines, cut canals, laid out roads, introduced sheep 
breeding, and fostered by protective tariffs the growth of silk 
and woolen manufactures. He instituted a police system and 
a postal service. He established schools of medicine, engineering, 
and navigation, as well as those of lower grade. He also framed 
a code of laws based upon the legal systems of western Europe. 







Austria and Maria Theresa 


373 

The remaking of Russia according to European models 
formed only half of Peter’s program. His foreign policy was 
equally ambitious. He realized that Russia needed st. Peters- 
readier access to the sea than could be found bur s 
through the Arctic port of Archangel. Peter made little head¬ 
way against the Turks, who controlled the Black Sea, but 
twenty years of intermittent warfare with the Swedes enabled 
him to acquire the Swedish provinces on the eastern shore of 
the Baltic. Here in the swamps of the river Neva, not far from 
the Gulf of Finland, Peter built a new and splendid capital, 
giving it the German name of (St.) Petersburg. 1 He had at 
last realized his long-cherished dream of opening a “window” 
through which the Russian people might look into Europe. 

108. Austria and Maria Theresa 

The Hapsburgs were originally feudal lords of a small district 
in what is now northern Switzerland, where the ruins of their 
ancestral castle 2 may still be seen. Count Rudolf, Hapsburg 
the real maker of the family fortunes, secured the dynasty 
archduchy of Austria, with its capital of Vienna, and in 1273 
was chosen Holy Roman Emperor. The imperial title after¬ 
ward became hereditary in the Hapsburg dynasty. 

The name “Austria” was loosely applied to all the territories 
which the Hapsburgs gradually acquired by conquest, marriage, 
or inheritance. They ruled in the eighteenth The Haps- 
century over the most extraordinary jumble of burg realm 
peoples to be found in Europe. There were Germans in Austria 
proper and Silesia, Czechs in Bohemia and Moravia, Magyars, 
Slovaks, Rumanians, Croatians, and Slovenians in Hungary 
and its dependencies, Italians in Milan and Tuscany, and 
Flemings and Walloons in the Netherlands. It was impossible 
to group such widely scattered peoples into one centralized 
state or to form them into a federation. Their sole bond of 
union was a common allegiance to the Hapsburg monarch. 

1 In 1914 the name was changed to the Slavic equivalent, Petrograd. In 1924, 
after the death of Lenin, Petrograd became Leningrad. 

2 German Habichtsburg (Hawks’ Burgh). 


374 


The Old Regime in Europe 


The Hapsburg realm threatened to break up in the eighteenth 
century upon the death of the emperor Charles VI, who lacked 
The male heirs. Charles, however, had made a so- 

Pragmatic called Pragmatic Sanction, or solemn compact, 
declaring his dominions to be indivisible and leav¬ 
ing them to his eldest daughter, Maria Theresa. Most of the 
European powers pledged themselves by treaty to observe this 
arrangement. 

The emperor died in 1740 and Maria Theresa became arch¬ 
duchess of Austria, queen of Hungary, queen of Bohemia, and 
Maria sovereign of all the other Hapsburg lands. She 

Theresa was then only twenty-three years old, strikingly 

handsome, and gifted with much charm of manner. Her youth, 
her beauty, and her sex might have entitled her to consideration 
by those states which had agreed to respect the Pragmatic 
Sanction. But a paper bulwark could not safeguard Austria 
against Prussia and Prussia’s allies. 


109. Prussia and Frederick the Great 

Prussia, the creator of modern Germany, was the creation of 
the Hohenzollerns. 1 It would be hard to name another Euro- 
Hohenzollern pean dynasty with so many able, ambitious, and 
dynasty unscrupulous rulers. The Hohenzollerns prided 

themselves on the fact that almost every member of the family 
enlarged the possessions received from his ancestors. They 
did this by purchase, by inheritance, by shrewd diplomacy, and, 
most of all, by hard fighting. When Frederick the Great 
(1740-1786) mounted the throne, their dominions included the 
mark of Brandenburg, which had formed in the Middle Ages 
a German colony beyond the Elbe, Pomerania, and East 
Prussia, along the Baltic coast east of the Vistula. There were 
also smaller Hohenzollern territories in central and western 
Germany. 

1 The name is derived from that of their castle on the heights of Zollem in south¬ 
ern Germany. Emperor William II, who abdicated in 1918, was the twenty-fourth 
ruler of the line. 


Russia and Frederick the Great 


375 


Only a strong hand could hold together the scattered pos¬ 
sessions of the Hohenzollerns. Their hand was strong. No 
monarchs of the age exercised more unlimited Prussian 
authority or required more complete obedience absolutism 
from their subjects. According to the Hohenzollern principle, 
the government could not be too absolute, provided it was 
■efficient. The ruler, work¬ 
ing through his ministers, 
who were merely his clerks, 
must foster agriculture, 
industry, and commerce, 
promote education, and 
act as the guide of his 
people in religion and 
morals. 

The Hohenzollerns de¬ 
voted themselves consist¬ 
ently to the Prussian 
upbuilding of militarism 

their military forces. They 
wanted an army powerful 
enough to defend a king¬ 
dom without natural boun¬ 
daries and stretching in 
detached provinces all the 
way from the Rhine to 
the Niemen. The sol¬ 
diers at first were volunteers, recruited in different parts of 
Germany, but it became necessary to fill up the gaps in the 
ranks by compulsory levies among the peasants. Carefully 
trained officers, appointed from the nobility and advanced only 
on merit, enforced an iron discipline. The soldiers, it was said, 
feared their commanders more than they did the enemy. 

Frederick the Great became king at the age of twenty-eight. 
He was rather below the average height and inclined Frederick 
to stoutness, good looking, with the fair hair of t ^ ie ^ reat 
North Germans and blue-gray eyes of extraordinary brilliancy. 












37 6 


The Old Regime in Europe 


By nature he seems to have been thoroughly selfish, unsym¬ 
pathetic, and crafty. He was not a man to inspire affection 
among his intimates, but with the mass of his subjects he was 
undeniably popular. Innumerable stories circulated in Prussia 
about the simplicity, good humor, and devotion to duty of old 
“Father Fritz.” 

The year of Frederick’s accession saw the beginning of a 
great European war. The responsibility for it rests on his 
War of the shoulders. The Prussian king coveted Silesia, 
Succession an Austrian province lying south of Brandenburg 
1740-1748 and mainly German in population. Frederick 
suddenly led his army into Silesia and overran the country 
without much difficulty. No justification existed for this 
action. As the king afterward confessed in his Memoirs, 
“Ambition, interest, and desire of making people talk about me 
carried the day; and I decided for war.” Frederick’s action 
precipitated a general European conflict. France, Spain, and 
Bavaria allied themselves with Prussia, while Great Britain and 
Holland, anxious to preserve the balance of power, took the 
side of Austria. Things might have gone hard with Maria 
Theresa but for the courage and energy which she displayed 
and the support of her Hungarian subjects. All the warring 
countries finally agreed to a mutual restoration of conquests 
(with the exception of Silesia) and signed the Peace of Aix-la- 
Chapelle. 

Maria Theresa still hoped to recover her lost province. As 

most of the European sovereigns were either afraid or jealous 

Seven Years’ Frederick, she found no great difficulty in form- 

War, 1756- ing a coalition against him. Russia, France, 
1763 7 

Sweden, and Saxony entered it. Great Britain, 

however, was this time an ally of Prussia. British gold sub¬ 
sidized the Prussian armies, and British troops, by fighting the 
French in Germany, India, and America, weakened Prussia’s 
most dangerous enemy. Frederick conducted a purely defen¬ 
sive warfare, thrusting now here and now there against his 
slower-moving adversaries, who never learned to act in concert 
and exert their full force simultaneously. Even so, the struggle 


The Puritan Revolution in England 377 

was desperately unequal. The Russians occupied East Prussia, 
penetrated Brandenburg, and even captured Berlin. Faced by 
the gradual wearing down of his armies, an empty treasury, and 
an impoverished country, Frederick more than once thought of 
suicide. What saved him was the accession of a new tsar. 
This ruler happened to be a warm admirer of the Prussian king 
and at once withdrew from the war. Maria Theresa, deprived 
of her eastern ally, now had to come to terms and leave Frederick 
in secure possession of Silesia. Soon afterward the Peace of 
Paris between France and Great Britain brought the Seven 
Years’ War to an end. 

This most bloody contest, which cost the lives of nearly a 
million men, seemed to settle little or nothing except the pos¬ 
session of Silesia. Yet the Seven Years’ War Position 
really marks an epoch in the political history of of Prussia 
Europe. The young Prussian kingdom appeared henceforth 
as one of the great powers of the Continent and as the only 
rival in Germany of the old Hapsburg monarchy. It was 
inevitable from this time that Prussia and Austria should 
struggle for predominance, and that the smaller German states 
should group themselves around one or the other. Frederick, 
of course, like all the Hohenzollerns, fought simply for the 
aggrandizement of Prussia, but the results of his work were dis¬ 
closed a century later when the German Empire came into being. 

110. The Puritan Revolution in England 

When absolutism prevailed, everything depended upon the 
personal character of the sovereign. A Peter the Great might 
set his country upon the road to civilization; a Tw0 revolu _ 
Louis XIV, on the contrary, might plunge his tions in 
people into indescribable misery as the result of England 
needless wars and extravagant expenditures. As time went on, 
it began to appear more and more unreasonable that a single 
person should have the power to make the laws, levy the taxes, 
spend the revenues, declare war, and conclude peace according 
to his own inclination. During the seventeenth century two 


378 


The Old Regime in Europe 


revolutions overthrew absolutism in England and replaced it 
with a limited monarchy, that is, a monarchy controlled by 
Parliament. We shall now learn how the English people, as 
represented in Parliament, became more powerful than their 
kings. 

Absolutism in England dated from the time of the Tudors. 
Henry VII humbled the nobles, while Henry VIII and Elizabeth 
Tudor abso- brought the Church into dependence on the Crown, 
lutism These three sovereigns, though despotic, were 

excellent rulers and were popular with the influential middle 
class in town and country. The Tudors gave England order 
and prosperity, if not political liberty. 

The English Parliament in the thirteenth century had become 
a body representative of the different estates of the realm, and 
Parliament i n the fourteenth century it had separated into the 
under the two houses of Lords and Commons (§ 80). Parlia¬ 
ment enjoyed considerable authority at this time. 
The kings, who were in continual need of money, often sum¬ 
moned it, sought its advice upon important questions, and 
readily listened to its requests. The despotic Tudors, on the 
other hand, made Parliament their servant. Henry VII called 
it together on only five occasions during his reign; Henry 
VIII persuaded or frightened it into doing anything he pleased; 
and Elizabeth consulted it as infrequently as possible. Parlia¬ 
ment under the Tudors did not abandon its claims to a share in 
the government, but it had little chance to exercise them. 

The death of Elizabeth in 1603 ended the Tudor dynasty and 
placed James I, 1 the first of the Stuarts, on the English throne. 
James I and England and Scotland were now joined in a personal 
Parliament union, though each country retained its own Par¬ 
liament, laws, and established Church. The unmistakable pur¬ 
pose of James to rule as an absolute monarch aroused much 
opposition in Parliament. That body felt little sympathy with 
a king who proclaimed himself the source of all law. When 
James, always extravagant and a poor financier, came before it 

1 James VI of Scotland. His mother, Mary Queen of Scots, was a granddaughter 
of Henry VII, the first of the Tudors. 


The Puritan Revolution in England 379 

for money, Parliament refused to give him any unless grievances 
were redressed. James would not yield, but got along as best 
he could by levying customs duties, selling titles of nobil¬ 
ity, and imposing excessive fines, in spite of the protests of 
Parliament. 

A religious controversy helped to embitter the dispute between 
James and Parliament. The king, who was a devout Angli¬ 
can, made 

, . . r Puritanism 

himself 

very unpopular with 
the Puritans, as the 
reformers within the 
Church of England 
were called. The Puri¬ 
tans had at first no in¬ 
tention of separating 
from the national or 
established Church, 
but they wished to 
“purify” h of certain 
customs which they described as “Romish.” Among these were 
the use of the surplice, of the ring in the marriage service, and 
of the sign of the cross in baptism. Some Puritans wanted to 
get rid of the Book of Common Prayer altogether. Since the 
Puritans had a large majority in the House of Commons, it 
was inevitable that the parliamentary struggle against Stuart 
absolutism should assume in part a religious character. 

The political and religious difficulties which marked the reign 
of James I did not disappear when his son, Charles I, came to 
the throne. Almost immediately he began to Charles I and 
quarrel with Parliament. When that body with- Parliament 
held supplies, Charles resorted to forced loans from the wealthy 
and even imprisoned a number of persons who refused to con¬ 
tribute. Such arbitrary acts showed plainly that Charles would 
play the tyrant if he could. The king’s attitude at last led 
Parliament to a bold assertion of its authority. It now pre¬ 
sented to Charles the celebrated Petition of Right. One of the 



A Puritan Family 

Illustration in an edition of the Psalms published in 1563. 













380 


The Old Regime in Europe 


most important clauses provided that loans without parlia¬ 
mentary sanction should be considered illegal. Another clause 
declared that no one should be arrested or imprisoned except 
according to the law of the land. The Petition thus repeated 
and reinforced some of the leading principles of Magna Carta 
(§80). The people of England, speaking this time through 
their elected representatives, asserted once more their right 
to limit the power of kings. 

Charles signed the Petition, in order to secure parliamentary 
consent to taxation, but he did not observe it. His autocratic 
Outbreak of rule, coupled with his harsh treatment of the 
Revolution* Puritans, at length provoked a revolution and civil 
1642 war in England. Around the king rallied nearly 

all the nobles, the Anglican clergy, the Roman Catholics, a 
majority of the “squires,” or country gentry, and the upper 
classes generally. The parliamentarians, who opposed him, 
were mostly recruited from the trading classes in the towns and 
the small landowners in the country. The working people re¬ 
mained as a rule indifferent and took little part in the struggle. 

Specimen oe Cromwell’s Handwriting 

Fortune favored the royalists until Oliver Cromwell took 
command of the parliamentary forces. A country gentleman 
Oliver from the east of England, Cromwell had repre- 

Cromweii sented the University of Cambridge in Parliament 
and had there displayed great boldness in opposing the royal 
government. An unfriendly critic at this time describes “his 
countenance swollen and reddish, his voice sharp and untuneable, 
and his eloquence full of fervor.” Though a zealous Puritan, 
who believed himself to be the chosen agent of the Lord, Crom¬ 
well was not an ascetic. He hunted, hawked, played bowls and 
other games, had an ear for music, and valued art and learning. 
In public life he showed himself a statesman of much insight 


The Puritan Revolution in England 381 


and a military genius. Cromwell’s decisive victories resulted 
in the collapse of the royalist cause and the triumph of the 
parliamentarians. 

Charles I was now brought for trial before a High Court of 
Justice composed of his bitterest enemies. He refused to 
acknowledge the right of the court to try him and Execution of 
made no defense whatever. Charles was speedily Charles 1, 
convicted and sentenced to be beheaded, “as a 1649 
tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy to the good of the 



Great Seal oe England under the Commonwealth (Reduced) 

The reverse represents the House of Commons in session. 


people.” He met death with quiet dignity on a scaffold erected 
in front of Whitehall Palace in London. The king’s execution 
went far beyond the wishes of most Englishmen; “cruel neces¬ 
sity” formed its only justification; but it established once for 













382 


The Old Regime in Europe 


all in England the principle that rulers are responsible to their 
subjects. 

Sweeping changes in the government of England followed the 
execution of Charles I. The kingship and the House of Lords 
The Common- were abolished, and the House of Commons was 
wealth and placed in sole control of legislation. England now 
Protectorate b ecame a Commonwealth, or national republic. 
This lasted only a short time and then gave way to the military 
dictatorship of Cromwell. He was really as powerful as any 
English king, but his reluctance to play the autocrat led him 
to accept a so-called Instrument of Government drawn up by 
some of his officers and notable as the only written constitu¬ 
tion which England has ever had. The Instrument of Govern¬ 
ment vested supreme authority in a single person styled the 
Lord Protector, holding office for life. Cromwell as Lord 
Protector ruled wisely and well until his death in 1658 left the 
army without a master and the nation without a strong man 
at the head of affairs. Two years later Parliament called the 
eldest son of Charles I to the throne of his father. 

It seemed, indeed, as if the Puritan Revolution had been a 
complete failure. But this was hardly true. The revolution 
Significance arrested the growth of absolutism and divine right 
of the Puritan in England. It created among Englishmen a 
Revolution lasting hostility to despotic rule, whether exercised 
by King, Parliament, Protector, or army. Furthermore, it 
sent forth into the world ideas of popular sovereignty, which, 
during the eighteenth century, helped to produce the American 
and French revolutions. 


111 . The “ Glorious Revolution ” in England 


Charles II pledged himself to maintain Magna Carta, the 
Petition of Right, and various statutes limiting the royal power. 
Reign of The people of England wished to have a king, but 
Charles II they a i so wished their king to govern by the advice 
of Parliament. Charles, less obstinate and more clever than 
his father, recognized this fact, and, when a conflict threatened 


The “ Glorious Revolution ” in England 383 

with his ministers or Parliament, always avoided it by timely 
concessions. Whatever happened, he used to say, he was 
resolved “never to set out on his travels again.” Charles’s 
charm of manner, wit, and genial humor made him a popular 
monarch, in spite of his grave faults of character. He was a 
king who “never said a foolish thing and never did a wise one.” 

One of the most impor¬ 
tant events belonging to the 
reign of Charles Habeas 
II was the pas- Corpus Act, 
sage by Parlia- 1679 
ment of the Habeas Corpus 
Act. The writ of habeas 
corpus 1 is an order, issued 
by a judge, requiring a person 
held in custody to be brought 
before the court. If upon 
examination good reason is 
shown for keeping the pris¬ 
oner, he is to be given a 
trial; otherwise he must 
either be freed or released on 
bail. This writ had been long 
used in England, and one of 
the clauses of Magna Carta expressly provided against arbitrary 
imprisonment. It had always been possible, however, for the 
king or his ministers to order the arrest of a person considered 
dangerous to the State, without making any formal charge 
against him. The Habeas Corpus Act established the principle 
that every man, not charged with or convicted of a known crime, 
is entitled to his liberty. Most of the British possessions where 
the Common Law prevails have accepted the act, and it has been 
adopted by the United States. 

The reign of Charles II also saw the beginning of the modern 
party system in Parliament. Two opposing parties took shape, 
very largely out of a religious controversy. The king, from his 
1 A Latin phrase meaning, “You may have the body.” 






384 


The Old Regime in Europe 


long life in France, was partial to Roman Catholicism, though 
he did not formally embrace that faith until the moment 
Whigs and of death. His brother James, the heir to the 
Tories throne, became an avowed Roman Catholic, much 

to the disgust of many members of Parliament. A bill was now 
brought forward to exclude Prince James from the succession, 
because of his conversion. Its supporters received the nick¬ 
name of Whigs, while those who opposed it were called 
Tories. The bill did not pass the House of Lords, but the 
two parties in Parliament continued to divide on other ques¬ 
tions. They survive to-day as the Liberals and the Conserv¬ 
atives, and still dispute the government of England between 
them. 

James II lacked the attractive personality which had made 
his brother a popular ruler; moreover, he was a staunch be- 
Reign of liever in the divine right of kings. James soon 
James ii managed to make enemies of most of his Protestant 
subjects by “suspending” the laws against Roman Catholics and 
by appointing them to positions of authority and influence. He 
also dismissed Parliament. Englishmen might have tolerated 
James to the end of his reign (he was then nearing sixty), in 
the hope that he would be succeeded by his Protestant daughter 
Mary. But the birth in 1688 of a son to his Roman Catholic 
second wife changed the whole situation by opening up the 
prospect of a Roman Catholic succession to the throne. At 
last a number of Whig and Tory leaders invited William, prince 
of Orange, stadholder or governor-general of Holland, to rescue 
England from Stuart despotism. 1 

William landed in England with a small army and marched 
unopposed to London. James II, deserted by his retainers and 
Accession soldiers, soon found himself alone. He fled to 
of William France, where he lived the remainder of his days 
as a pensioner at the French court. Parliament 
granted the throne conjointly to William and Mary, William 
to rule during his lifetime and Mary to have the succession 


1 William was Mary’s husband. 


The “ Glorious Revolution ” in England 385 

if she survived him. 1 Should they have no children, the throne 
was to go to Mary’s sister Anne. 

Parliament took care to continue its own authority and the 
Protestant religion by enacting the Bill of Rights, which has a 
place by the side of Magna Carta and the Petition The Bill of 
of Right among the great documents of English Ri s hts > 1689 
constitutional history. This Act decreed that the sovereign 
must henceforth be a member of the Anglican Church. It for¬ 
bade him to “suspend” the operation of the laws, or to levy 
money or maintain a standing army except by consent of Par¬ 
liament. It also declared that election of members of Parliament 
should be free, that they should enjoy freedom of speech and 
action within the two Houses; and that excessive bail should 
not be required, or excessive fines imposed, or cruel and unusual 
punishments inflicted. Finally, it affirmed the right of sub¬ 
jects to petition the sovereign and ordered the holding of fre¬ 
quent Parliaments. These were not new principles of political 
liberty, but now the English people were strong enough to 
give them the binding form of laws. They reappear in the 
first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States. 

The Revolution of 1688-1689 struck a final blow at absolutism 
and divine right in England. An English king became hence¬ 
forth the servant of Parliament, holding office only The „ Glori _ 
on good behavior. An Act of Parliament had made ous Revolu- 
him and an Act of Parliament might depose him. tlon 
It is well to remember, however, that the Revolution did not 
form a popular movement. It was a successful struggle for 
parliamentary supremacy on the part of the upper classes. 
The government of England still remained far removed from 
democracy. 

The supremacy won by Parliament was safeguarded, a few 
years later, by the passage of the Act of Settlement. It pro¬ 
vided that in case William III or his sister-in-law Act of 
Anne died without heirs, the crown should pass to Settlement, 
Sophia, electress of Hanover, and her descendants. 1701 
She was the granddaughter of James I and a Protestant. This 

1 Mary, however, died in 1694. 


3 86 


The Old Regime in Europe 


arrangement deliberately excluded a number of nearer represent¬ 
atives of the Stuart house from the succession, because they were 
Roman Catholics. Parliament thus asserted in the strongest 
way the right of the English people to choose their own rulers. 

Queen Anne died in 1714, and in accordance with the Act 
of Settlement, George I, the son of Sophia of Hanover, ascended 
Hanoverian the thyone. He was the first member of the Han- 
dynasty overian dynasty, which has since continued to reign 

in Great Britain. In 1917, however, the official name of the 
English ruling family was changed to “House of Windsor.” 


Stuart and Hanoverian Dynasties 


James I (1603-1625) 

I 


Charles I 
(1625-1649) 

I 


Elizabeth, 


Charles II 
(1660-1685) 
Mary, m. William, 

I Prince of Orange 


James II 
(1685-1688) 


m. Frederick V, Elector of the 

Palatinate 

Sophia, m. Ernest Augustus, Elector 
of Hanover 

George I 
(1714-1727) 


William III, m. Mary 
Prince of (1689-1694) 
Orange, 

King of 

England (1689-1702) 


Anne George II 

(1702-1714) (1727-1760) 

Frederick, Prince of Wales 

(d. 1751) 

I 

George III 
(1760-1820) 


George IV William IV 
(1820-1830) (1830-1837) 


Edward, Duke of Kent 

I . 

Victoria 

(1837-1901) 

Edward VII 
(1901-1910) 

George V 
(1910 ) 


112. The Reformers 

The abuses of the Old Regime were not greater in the seven- 
The reform- teenth and eighteenth centuries than for hundreds 
mg spirit of years before, but now they were to be seriously 
attacked by thinkers who applied the test of reasonableness 







The Reformers 


387 


to every institution. It was felt that the time had come when 
mankind might well discard many ideas and customs, once 
serviceable perhaps, but now outworn. The chief obstacle in 
the way of progress seemed to be human ignorance, prejudice, 
and excessive regard for the past. Systematic and accurate 
knowledge would destroy this attachment to “ the good old days ” 
and would enable man to create more reasonable and enlightened 
institutions. In other words, thinkers were stirred by the 
reforming spirit. 

How the spirit of free inquiry acted as a revolutionary ferment 
is well illustrated in the case of John Locke, an eminent English 
philosopher. In his Two Treatises on Government , Rationalism 
published in 1689 shortly after the “ Glorious Revo- in P° Utics 
lution,” he developed a theory of politics utterly opposed to the 
old doctrine of the divine right of kings. According to Locke, 
all men possess certain natural rights to life, liberty, and the 
ownership of property. To preserve these rights they have 
entered into a contract with one another, agreeing that the 
majority shall have power to make and execute all necessary 
laws. If the government, thus created, breaks the contract by 
violating man’s natural rights, it has no longer any claim to the 
obedience of its subjects and may be overthrown by them. 
To say that all government exists, or should exist, by the 
consent of the governed is to set up the doctrine of popular 
sovereignty. The American colonists in their controversy with 
George III and his ministers upheld this doctrine, and there are 
passages in the Declaration of Independence which reproduce 
the very words of Locke and other English writers. But their 
ideas found the heartiest reception in France. Enlightened 
members of the nobility and bourgeoisie , weary of royal despotism, 
took them up and spread them among the people. 

France during the eighteenth century had not been able to 
maintain the high position among European states to which 
she had been raised by Louis XIV, and in the intellectual 
struggle for colonial empire she had been defeated leadership 
by Great Britain (§121). Her intellectual leader- of France 
ship compensated in part for what she had lost. Throughout 


3 88 


The Old Regime in Europe 


this century France gave birth to a succession of thinkers, whose 
ideas fell like rain upon the parched soil of the Old Regime. 
Some of them had lived for a time in Great Britain as refugees 
from the persecution which too bold thinking involved at home. 
Their life there made them acquainted with the British system 
of limited monarchy and parliamentary control of legislation. 
They wished to secure for France and other Continental coun¬ 
tries at least an equal measure of political liberty. 

A nobleman, lawyer, and judge, 
Montesquieu spent twenty years 
Montesquieu, in composing a single 
1689-1755 book on the Spirit of 
Laws. It is a classic in political 
science. There was nothing revo¬ 
lutionary in Montesquieu’s con¬ 
clusions. He examined each form 
of government in order to deter¬ 
mine its excellencies and defects. 
The British constitution seemed 
to him most admirable, as com¬ 
bining the virtues of monarchy, 
aristocracy, and democracy. Mon¬ 
tesquieu especially insisted upon 
the necessity of separating the 
executive, legislative, and judicial functions of government, in¬ 
stead of combining them in the person of a single ruler. This 
idea influenced the French revolutionists and also had great 
weight with the framers of the Constitution of the United States. 

The foremost figure among the “ philosophers ” was Voltaire, 
who sprang from the bourgeoisie. For more than half a cen- 
Voltaire, tury he poured forth a succession of poems, 
1694-1778 dramas, essays, biographies, histories, and other 
works, so clearly written, so witty, and so sensible as to win 
the applause of his contemporaries. Voltaire did not confine 
his criticisms of the Old Regime to politics; he also condemned 
in unsparing terms the religious intolerance of the age. His 
work here was needed in the eighteenth century. 



Voltaire 

A statue by J. A. Houdon in the 
Comedie Franchise, Paris. 


The Reformers 


389 


If Voltaire was the destroyer of the old, Rousseau was the 
prophet of the new. This son of a Geneva watchmaker, who 
wandered from one European capital to another, Rousseau, 
made a failure of everything he undertook and died 1712-1778 
poverty-stricken and demented. The discouragements and mis¬ 
eries of his career found expression in what he wrote. Rousseau 
felt only contempt for the boasted civilization of the age. He 
loved to picture what he sup¬ 
posed was once the “state of 
nature,” before governments 
had arisen, before the strong 
had begun to oppress the weak, 
when nobody owned the land, 
and when there were no taxes 
and no wars. “Back to na¬ 
ture” was Rousseau’s cry. 

Such fancies Rousseau ap¬ 
plied to politics in what was 
his most impor- The << Social 
tant book, the Contract,” 

Social Contract. 1762 
Starting with the statement 
that “man was born free and 
everywhere he is in chains,” 
he went on to describe a 
purely ideal state of society in 
which the citizens are ruled 
neither by kings nor parliaments, but themselves make the laws 
directly. The only way to reform the world, according to 
Rousseau, was to restore the sovereignty of the people, with 
“Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” for all. As we have just 
learned, the idea that governments and laws arise by voluntary 
agreements among men, who may overthrow them when neces¬ 
sary, was not new; but Rousseau first made it widely popular. 
His countrymen read the Social Contract with intense interest, 
and during the French Revolution they proceeded to put its 
democratic teachings into effect. 



Jean Jacques Rousseau 

After the painting in the Musee Carnavalet, 
Paris. 


390 


The Old Regime in Europe 


Rousseau, Voltaire, and Montesquieu were among the con¬ 
tributors to the famous Encyclopedia , a work in seventeen 
The En- volumes, which appeared after the middle of the 
cyclopedists eighteenth century. It formed a storehouse of all 
the scientific and historical knowledge of the age. The Encyclo¬ 
pedists, as its editors are known, sought to guide opinion, as well 
as to give information. They were radical thinkers, who com¬ 
bined in a great effort to throw the light of reason on the dark 
places of the social order. Among the abuses attacked by them 
were religious intolerance, the slave trade, the cruel criminal 
law, and the unjust system of taxation. The Encyclopedists 
even ventured to criticize absolutism in government. Their 
work thus set in motion a current of revolt which did much to 
undermine the Old Regime in France. 


Paternalism 


113. The Enlightened Despots 

The ideas of the “ philosophers ” spread throughout those parts 
of Europe where French models were followed. Even kings 
and statesmen began to be affected by the spirit 
of reform. European rulers did not intend to 
surrender the least fraction of absolute power; they were still 
autocrats who believed in government by one strong man rather 
than by the democratic many; but with their despotism they 
combined a real desire for the welfare of their subjects. They 
took measures to secure religious toleration, to relieve poverty, 
to codify the laws, to provide elementary education, and to 
encourage scientific research. These activities have won for 
them the name of the “enlightened despots.” 

In Russia Catherine the Great, who reigned during the latter 
part of the eighteenth century, posed as an enlightened despot. 
Catherine But Catherine paid little more than lip-service to 

the Great the iq eas 0 f the French thinkers. If she abolished 

torture, she did not do away with the knout; for capital pun¬ 
ishment she only substituted the living death of exile in Siberia. 
Her toleration of dissenters from the Orthodox, or Greek Church 
stopped short of allowing them to build chapels for public wor¬ 
ship, and her passion for legislative reform grew cold when she 


The Enlightened Despots 


39i 



found that she must begin by freeing the serfs. Catherine’s 
real attitude is exhibited in a letter to the governor of Moscow: 
“My dear prince, do not complain that the Russians have no 
desire for instruction; if I institute schools it is not for us, it is 
for Europe, where we must keep our position in public opinion. 
But the day when our peasants shall wish to become educated 
both you and I will lose our places.” 

Catherine’s contemporary, Frederick the Great, was a despot 
more sincere and more enlightened. He worked harder and 
had fewer Frederick 
pleasures than the Great 
any other king of his day. 

Although Frederick’s re¬ 
sources had been so com¬ 
pletely drained by the 
Seven Years’ War that it 
was necessary for him to 
melt the silver in the royal 
palaces and debase the 
currency, his vigorous 
measures soon restored the 
national prosperity. * He 
labored in a hundred ways 
to make Prussia the best- 

governed state in Europe. Catherine II 

Thus, he founded elemen- After a painting by Van Wilk. 

tary schools so that his 

subjects could learn at least to read and write, and reformed 
the courts so that everybody from high to low might be as¬ 
sured of impartial justice. A liberal in religion, the corre¬ 
spondent and friend of Voltaire, Frederick declared that every 
one should be allowed to get to heaven in his own way, and 
backed up his declaration by putting Roman Catholics on an 
equality with Protestants throughout the Prussian dominions. 
No less than thirty volumes, all in French, contain the poems, 
letters, and books on history, politics, and military matters 
which Frederick managed to compose in the spare moments of 






392 


The Old Regime in Europe 


a busy life. This philosopher on the throne held the attention 
of his generation in the world of ideas as well as in that of 
diplomacy and war. 

In Austria, Joseph II , 1 the eldest son of Maria Theresa, pre¬ 
sented a less successful type of the enlightened despot. Joseph 
jo e h ii wished to make over the various peoples in the 
Hapsburg realm, with all their differences of race, 
speech, and religion, into a single unified nation. German 
officials sent out from Vienna were to administer the affairs 
of each province. The army was to be built up by compulsory 
service after the Prussian model. German was to be used 
everywhere as the official language. Most unwisely, however, 
Joseph tried to do in a short lifetime what all the Hapsburg 
rulers after him could not accomplish. The result was that his 
measures to Germanize Hungarians, Bohemians, Italians, and 
Netherlanders only aroused hostility and did not survive his 
death. The sentence that the king himself proposed as his 
epitaph was a truthful summary of his reign: “Here lies the 
man who, with the best intentions, never succeeded in any¬ 
thing.” 

Paternal government had two serious weaknesses. First, 
the despots could not determine the policy of their successors. 
Failure of An able and liberal-minded ruler might be followed 

paternalism by a ruler who was indolent, extravagant, and 
unprogressive. In Prussia, for instance, the weak reign of 
Frederick the Great’s successor undid much of his work. The 
same thing happened in Spain and Portugal. Second, the 
despots, however enlightened, treated their subjects as children 
and made reforms without first discovering whether reformation 
was popularly desired. Their work, therefore, often did not 
endure, as was the case in Austria. Paternalism in government 
consequently gave way to popular sovereignty and democracy. 
How these were brought in by the French Revolution and the 
other revolutionary movements that followed it will be told in 
a later chapter. 

1 Holy Roman Emperor, 1765-1790, and sole ruler of the Hapsburg dominions, 
1780-1790. 


The Enlightened Despots 


393 


Studies 

i. What is the essential distinction between a “limited” or “con¬ 
stitutional” monarchy and an “absolute” or “autocratic” monarchy? 
2. “ The evils of European society were rooted in feudalism and en¬ 
trenched in privilege.” Comment on this statement. 3. Describe 
those features of the Old Regime which led to the demand for “ Liberty, 
Equality, Fraternity.” 4. Give some account of the wars of Louis XIV 
and show how far the “ natural boundaries ” of France were reached 
during his reign. 5. How was Russia until the time of Peter 
the Great rather an “annex of Asia” than a part of Europe? 
6. “ Russia is the last-born child of European civilization.” Comment 
on this statement. 7. Account for the development of both absolu¬ 
tism and militarism in Prussia. 8. Why were the reformers within 
the Church of England called Puritans? 9. Trace the downfall of 
divine right as a political doctrine in seventeenth-century England. 
10. Show that the Revolution of 1688-1689 was a “preserving” and 
not a “destroying” revolution. n. What circumstances gave rise 
to (a) the Petition of Right, (&) The Bill of Rights, and (c) the Act of 
Settlement? 12. Using the genealogical table (on page 386), show 
the claims of the Hanoverians to the English throne. 13. How did 
Locke’s theory of the social contract provide the intellectual justification 
for the “Glorious Revolution”? 14. Why has Rousseau’s Social 
Contract been called “the Bible of the French Revolution” and the 
“gospel of modern democracy”? 15. “No reform can produce real 
good unless it is the work of public opinion, and unless the people 
themselves take the initiative.” Discuss the justice of this statement. 
16. Why is it better for a nation to make mistakes in the course of self- 
government than to be ruled, however wisely, by an irresponsible 
monarch? 17. Why did not the reforms of the enlightened despots 
make a revolution unnecessary? 


CHAPTER XIII 


COMMERCE AND COLONIES DURING THE SEVEN¬ 
TEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 1 

114. Mercantilism and Trading Companies 

Portugal and Spain had chiefly profited by the geographical 
discoveries and colonizing movements of the fifteenth and six- 
New rivals teenth centuries. The decline of these two coun- 
for colonial tries enabled other European nations to step into 
empire their place as rivals for commerce, colonies, and the 

control of the seas. The Dutch were first in the field, followed 
later by the French and the English. 

Many motives inspired colonial expansion in the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries. Political aims had considerable 
Motives for weight. Holland, France, and England wanted 
colonization possessions overseas as a balance to those obtained 
by Portugal and Spain. The religious impulse also played a 
part, as when Jesuit missionaries penetrated the American 
wilderness to convert the Indians to Christianity and when the 
Pilgrim Fathers sought in the New World a refuge from perse¬ 
cution. But the main motive for colonization was economic in 
character. Colonies were planted in order to furnish the home 
land with raw materials for its manufactures, new markets, and 
favorable opportunities for the investment of capital in com¬ 
merce and industry. 

Most European statesmen at this time accepted the principles 
of the mercantile system. Mercantilism is the name given to 

1 Webster, Readings in Modern European History, chapter x, “The Aborigines of 
the Pacific” ; chapter xi, “The Pilgrim Fathers”; chapter xii, “The Autobiography 
of Benjamin Franklin” ; chapter xiii, “Burke’s Defense of the American Colonists”; 
chapter xiv, “Washington’s Farewell Address.” 

394 


West O c y 40° Longitude from Greenwich 































































































• ■ 



































Mercantilism and Trading Companies 395 

the economic doctrine that stressed the importance of foreign 
trade, or commerce — “merchandising”—as a source of na¬ 
tional wealth. Some Mercantilists even argued The 
that the prosperity of a nation is in exact proportion mercantile 
to the amount of money in circulation within its system 
borders. They urged, therefore, that each country should so 
conduct its dealings with other countries as to attract to itself 
the largest possible share of the precious metals. This could 
be most easily done by fostering exports of manufactures, 
through bounties and special privileges, and by discouraging 
imports, except of raw materials. If the country sold more to 
foreigners than it bought of them, then there would be a “fa¬ 
vorable balance of trade,” and this balance the foreigners would 
have to make up in coin or bullion. 

Large and flourishing colonies seemed essential to the success 
of the mercantile system. Colonies were viewed simply as 
estates to be worked for the advantage of the Mercantilism 
country fortunate enough to possess them. The and colonial 
home government tried to prevent other govern- policy 
ments from trading with its dependencies. It also either pro¬ 
hibited or placed serious restrictions on colonial manufactures 
which might compete with those of the mother country. Por¬ 
tugal and Spain in earlier times, and now Holland, France, and 
England, pursued this colonial policy. 

The home government did not itself engage in colonial com¬ 
merce. It granted this privilege to private com- Trading 
panies organized for the purpose. A company, in companies 
return for the monopoly of trade with the inhabitants of a 
colony, was expected to govern and protect them. 

The first form of association was the regulated company. 
Each member, after paying the entrance fee, traded with his 
own capital at his own risk and kept his profits to Regulated 
himself. This loose association afterward gave stl>ck 0int " 
way to the joint-stock company. The members companies 
contributed to a common fund and, instead of trading them¬ 
selves, intrusted the management of the business to a board of 
directors. Any one who invested his capital would then receive 


396 


Commerce and Colonies 


a “dividend” on his “shares” of the joint stock, provided the 
enterprise was successful. Joint-stock companies thus formed a 
connecting link with modern corporations. 

Trading companies were very numerous. For instance, 
Holland, France, England, Sweden, and Denmark, as well as 
Examples of Scotland and Prussia, each chartered its own 
trading “East India Company.” England had many 

companies trading companies, particularly those which oper¬ 

ated in the Baltic lands, Russia, Turkey, India, Morocco, 
West Africa, and North America. 


115. The Dutch Colonial Empire 

The Low Countries, or Netherlands, now divided between 
Belgium and Hplland, belonged to Spain in the sixteenth 
Rise of century. The Dutch, who lived in the northern 

Holland provinces of the Netherlands, were governed 

despotically by the Spanish monarch, Philip II (son of the 
Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V). He also tried by cruel 
persecutions to stamp out their Protestant faith. As a result, 
they formed in 1579 the Union of Utrecht and two years later 
declared their independence of Spain. They won their freedom 
only after a long and hard contest. Under a resourceful leader, 
William the Silent, the Dutch resisted stubbornly behind the 
walls of their cities and on more than one occasion repelled the 
Spaniards by cutting the dikes and letting in the sea. The long 
struggle bound the Dutch together and made them one nation. 
The republic which they founded ought to be of special interest 
to Americans. Holland had the earliest system of common 
schools supported by taxation, early adopted the principles of 
religious toleration and freedom of the press, and in the Union of 
Utrecht gave to the world the first written constitution of a 
modern state. 

The Dutch, living in a small territory which was never 
Holland as a ca P a bl e of supporting more than a fraction of the 
commercial inhabitants by agriculture, naturally became sea¬ 
men. They built up an extensive transport trade 
between the Mediterranean and the Baltic lands. After the 


The Dutch Colonial Empire 397 

discovery of the Cape route to the East Indies (§ 97), Dutch 
traders met Portuguese merchants at Lisbon and there obtained 
spices and other eastern commodities for distribution through¬ 
out Europe. The rupture with Spain really turned to the com¬ 
mercial advantage of the Dutch. They now began to make 
expeditions directly to the East Indies, whose trade had been 
monopolized by Portugal and Spain for almost a century. 



They also captured many Portuguese and Spanish ships, 
secured commercial ports on the coasts of Africa and India, and 
established themselves securely in the Far East. 

The Dutch government presently chartered the East India 
Company and gave to it the monopoly of trade and rule from 
the Cape of Good Hope eastward to the Strait of Dutch 
Magellan. The company operated chiefly in the East India 
rich islands of the Malay Archipelago. Here much Company 
bitter fighting took place with the Portuguese, who were finally 
driven from nearly all of their eastern possessions. Ceylon, 
Malacca, Sumatra, Java, Celebes, and the Moluccas, or Spice 
Islands, passed into the hands of the Dutch. The headquarters 



























398 


Commerce and Colonies 


of the Dutch East India Company were located at Batavia in 
Java. This city still remains one of the leading commercial 
centers of the Far East. 

The Dutch possessions included the Cape of Good Hope, 
where the Dutch East India Company made a permanent settle- 
The Dutch in ment (Cape Town). It was intended, at first, to be 
South Africa simply a way-station or port of refreshment for 
ships on the route to the Indies. Before long, however, Dutch 
emigrants began to arrive in increasing numbers, together with 
French Protestants who had left their native land to escape 
persecution. These farmer-settlers, or Boers, passed slowly 



New Amsterdam in 1655 

After Van der Donck’s New Netherland. 


into the interior and laid there the foundation of Dutch sway 
in South Africa. The Cape of Good Hope became a British 
possession at the opening of the nineteenth century, but the 
Boer republics retained their independence until our own day. 

Fired by their success and enriched by their gains in the East, 
the Dutch started out to form another colonial empire in the 
The Dutch West. It was a Dutchman, Henry Hudson, who, 
in America seeking a northwest passage to the East Indies, dis¬ 
covered in 1609 the river which bears his name. The Dutch 
sent out ships to trade with the natives and built a fort on 
Manhattan Island. The Dutch West India Company soon 
received a charter for commerce and colonization between the 
west coast of Africa and the east coast of the Americas. The 







Rivalry of the French and English in India 399 

company’s little station on Manhattan Island became the 
flourishing port of New Amsterdam, from which the Dutch 
settlement of New Netherland spread up the Hudson River. 
The company also secured a large part of Guiana, as well as 
some of the West Indies. 

The Dutch for a time were the leaders of commercial Europe. 
They owned more merchant ships than any other people and 
almost monopolized the carrying trade from the Dutch 
East Indies and between the Mediterranean and colonies 
the Baltic. Though afterward outstripped by t0 " day 
France and England in the race for commerce and colonies, 
Holland still keeps most of the tropical dependencies acquired 
in the seventeenth century. These are about sixty times as 
large and six times as populous as the mother country. 

116. Rivalry of the French and English in India 

The Portuguese and later the Dutch enjoyed a profitable trade 
with India, which supplied them with cotton, indigo, spices, dyes, 
drugs, precious stones, and other articles of luxury indm and 
in European demand. In the seventeenth century, Europe 
however, the French and the English became the principal 
competitors for Indian trade, and in the eighteenth century the 
rivalry between them led to the defeat of the French and the 
secure establishment of England’s rule over India. A region 
half as large as Europe began to pass under the control of a single 
European power. 

The conquest of India was made possible by the decline of the 
Mogul (or Mongol) Empire, which had been founded by the 
Turkish chieftain Baber in the sixteenth century. i n dia under 
That empire, though renowned for its pomp and the Moguls 
magnificence, never achieved a real unification of India. The 
country continued to be a collection of separate provinces, whose 
inhabitants were isolated from one another by differences of race, 
language, and religion. The Indian peoples had no feeling of 
nationality, and when the Mogul Empire broke up they were 
ready, with perfect indifference, to accept any other government 
able to keep order among them. 


400 


Commerce and Colonies 


Neither France nor England began by making annexations in 
India. Each country merely established an East India com- 
The East .pany, giving to it a monopoly of trade between 


The East 
India 


India and the home land. The French company, 


companies chartered during the reign of Louis XIV, had its 
headquarters at Pondicherry, on the southeastern coast of India. 
The English company, which received its first charter from Queen 


Elizabeth, possessed three 



widely separated settlements 
at Bombay, Madras, and Cal¬ 
cutta. 


The French were the first 
to attempt the task of em- 



Dupleix 


leadership of Dupleix, the 
able governor-general of Pon¬ 
dicherry. Dupleix saw clearly 
that the break-up of the Mo¬ 
gul Empire and the defense¬ 
less condition of the native 
states opened the way to the 
European conquest of India. 
In order that the French 
might profit by this unique 
opportunity, he entered into 
alliance with some of the In¬ 


A Mogul Emperor 


dian princes, fortified Pondicherry, and managed to form an 
army by enlisting native soldiers (“sepoys”), who were drilled 
by French officers. The English afterward did the same thing, 
and to this day “sepoys” comprise the bulk of the Indian forces 
of Great Britain. Upon the outbreak of the War of the Aus¬ 
trian Succession (§ 109) the French captured Madras, but it was 
restored to the English by the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. Du¬ 
pleix continued, however, to extend French influence in the 
south and east of India. 

The English could not look unconcernedly upon the progress 







' 

:■'« : : 

■ IS 






THE TAJ MAHAL, AGRA 

Erected by the Mogul emperor, Shah Jehan, as a tomb for his favorite wife, Muntaz 
Mahal. It was begun in 1632 a.d. and was completed in twenty-two years. The material 
is pure white marble, inlaid with jasper, agate, and other precious stones. The building 
rests on a marble terrace, at each corner of which rises a tall, graceful minaret. The 
extreme delicacy of the Taj Mahal and the richness of its ornamentation make it a 
masterpiece of architecture. 


































































Rivalry of the French and English in India 401 



of their French rivals, and it was a young Englishman, Robert 
Clive, whose genius checkmated Dupleix’s ambitious schemes. 
To Clive, more than any other man, Great Britain owes 


































































402 


Commerce and Colonies 


Clive 


the beginning of her present Indian Empire. Clive had been 
a clerk in the employ of the East India Company at Ma¬ 
dras, but he soon got an ensign’s commission and 
entered upon a military career. His first success 
was gained in southeastern India. Here he managed to over¬ 
throw an upstart prince whom Dupleix supported and to restore 
English influence in that part of the peninsula. Dupleix was 
recalled in disgrace to France, where he died a disappointed man. 

Clive now found an opportunity for even greater service. 
The native ruler of Bengal, a man ferocious in temper and 
Battle of consumed with hatred of the English, suddenly 
Piassey, captured Calcutta. He allowed one hundred and 
forty-six. prisoners to be confined in a tiny room, 
where they passed the sultry night without water. Next 
morning only twenty-three came forth alive from the “ Black 
Hole.” This atrocity was sufficiently avenged by the wonderful 
victory of Piassey, in which Clive, with a handful of soldiers, 
overthrew an Indian army of fifty thousand men. Piassey 
showed conclusively that native troops were no match for 
Europeans and made the English masters of Bengal, with its 
rich delta, mighty river (the Ganges), and teeming population. 

Meanwhile, the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War in Europe 
(§ 109) renewed the contest between France and England on 
The Seven Indian soil. The English were completely success- 
Years’ War ful, for their control of the sea prevented the 
French government from sending reinforcements 
to India. France recovered her territorial possessions by the 
Peace of Paris in 1763, but agreed not to fortify them. This 
meant that she gave up her dream of an empire in India. Eng¬ 
land henceforth enjoyed a free hand in shaping the destinies of 
that vast region. 


117. The Settlement of North America 

Magellan’s discovery of a strait leading into the Pacific 
aroused hope that a similar passage, beyond the regions con¬ 
trolled by Spain, might exist in North America. A French 



The Settlement of North America 


403 


navigator, Jacques Cartier, made several voyages between 1534- 
1542 to look for it. Cartier found the great gulf and river which 
he named after St. Lawrence and also tried to es- Lateness of 
tablish a settlement near where Quebec now stands. French 
His venture was not successful, and the French did colomzatlon 
not undertake further colonization of Canada until the first 
decade of the seventeenth century. 

The first great name in Canadian history is that of Samuel de 
Champlain, who enjoyed the patronage of Henry IV. Cham¬ 
plain explored the coast of Maine and Massachu- Champlain 
setts, discovered the beautiful lake now called after and Canada 
him, traced the course of the St. Lawrence River, and also came 
upon lakes Ontario and Huron. He set up a permanent French 
post at Quebec in 1608, and three years later founded Montreal. 

During the reign of Louis XIV the exploration of Canada 
went on with renewed energy. The French, hitherto, had been 
spurred by the hope of finding in the Great Lakes La Salle and 
a western passage to Cathay. Joliet, the fur Louisiana 
trader, and Marquette, the Jesuit missionary, believed that they 
had actually found the highway uniting the Atlantic and the 
Pacific, when their birchbark canoes first glided into the upper 
Mississippi. It was reserved for the greatest of French explorers, 
Robert de La Salle, to discover the true character of the “Father 
of Waters” and to perform the feat of descending it to the sea. 
He took possession of all the territory drained by the Mississippi 
for Louis XIV, naming it Louisiana. 

Where La Salle had shown the way, missionaries, fur traders, 
hunters, and adventurers quickly followed. The French now 
began to realize the importance of the Mississippi France 
Valley, which time was to prove the most extensive 
fertile area in the world. Efforts were made to occupy it and to 
connect it with Canada by a chain of forts reaching from Quebec 
and Montreal on the St. Lawrence to New Orleans 1 at the 
mouth of the Mississippi. All of the continent west of the Alle¬ 
ghenies was to become New France. 

1 Named after the Due d’Orleans, who was regent of France during the minority 
of Louis XV. See page 370, note 1. 


404 


Commerce and Colonies 


However ambitious this design, it seemed not impossible 
of fulfillment. New France, a single royal province under one 
strength and military governor, offered a united front to the 
weakness of divided English colonies. The population, though 
New France sma p compared with the number of the English 
colonists, consisted mostly of men of military age, good fighters, 
and aided by numerous Indian allies. Lack of home support 

largely offset these real 
advantages. While 
the French were con¬ 
tending for colonial 
supremacy, they were 
constantly at war in 
Europe. They wasted 
on European battle¬ 
fields the resources 
which might otherwise 
have been expended in 
America. Further¬ 
more, the despotism 
of Louis XIV and 
Louis XV hampered 
private enterprise in 
New France by vex¬ 
atious restrictions on 
trade and industry, and at the same time deprived the inhabit¬ 
ants of training in self-government. The French settlers never 
breathed the air of liberty, while the English colonists in political 
matters were left almost entirely to themselves. The failure of 
France to become a world power at this time was due, therefore, 
chiefly to the unfortunate policies of her rulers. 

The English based their claim to the right to colonize North 
America on the discoveries of John Cabot, an Italian mariner in 
Lateness of the serv i ce °f the Tudor king, Henry VII. Cabot 
English in 1497-1498 made two voyages across the Atlantic 

colonization anc j ex p} orec i the North American coast from 
Labrador almost to Florida. As he found in the New World 



The Mayflower 


A model of the tiny vessel in which the Pilgrims, num¬ 
bering one hundred and two men, women, and children, 
sailed from Plymouth, England, in 1620. In the Smith¬ 
sonian Institution at Washington. 







The Settlement of North America 


405 


neither gold nor openings for profitable trade, his expeditions 
were considered a failure. Other discoveries were made by Eng¬ 
lish seamen seeking a route to India by the Northwest Passage. 
The names Frobisher Bay, Davis Strait, and Baffin Land 
still preserve the memory of the daring navigators who first 
explored the channels leading into the Arctic Ocean. During 
Elizabeth’s reign Sir Walter Raleigh planted a settlement 
in the region then called Virginia, after the “Virgin Queen,” 
but lack of support from home caused it to perish miserably. 



The Penn Treaty Belt 


A belt of white wampum with two figures in the middle in dark colored beads representing 
an Indian and a white man (the latter with a hat) who clasp hands as a sign of friendship. 
This belt was given to William Penn in 1682, when he made a treaty with the Indians on the 
Delaware. In the collections of the Pennsylvania Historical Society, Philadelphia. 


The first permanent settlements of Englishmen in America 
were made at Jamestown, Virginia (1607), and Plymouth (1620), 
during the reign of James I. The reign of Charles English 
I saw the foundation of Massachusetts and Mary- colonies 
land, and that of Charles II, the foundation of Pennsylvania and 
the Carolinas. By the end of the seventeenth century Massa¬ 
chusetts had absorbed Plymouth and had thrown out the off¬ 
shoots which presently became Rhode Island, Connecticut, and 
New Hampshire. The Dutch colony of New Netherland soon 
passed into the hands of the English and became New York. 
Charles II granted it to his brother James, duke of York and 
Albany, who afterward reigned as James II. James, in turn, 
bestowed the region between the Hudson and Delaware rivers 
upon two court favorites, and it received the name of New 
Jersey. The small Swedish settlement on the Delaware, which 
had been established by the South Company of Sweden, was 
annexed by the Dutch and then by the English. Delaware 







406 


Commerce and Colonies 


later became a separate colony. Georgia, the southernmost of 
the English colonies, was not settled until the reign of George II, 
in whose honor it was named. 

Both New England and the southern colonies were chiefly 

English in blood. Many 
Anglo-Saxon emigrants also 
expansion came from 

other parts of the British 
Isles. The emigrants from 
Continental Europe in¬ 
cluded French Protestants 
and Germans from the 
Rhine districts. The pop¬ 
ulation of the middle col¬ 
onies was far more mixed. 
Besides English and a 
sprinkling of Scotch and 
Irish,’ it comprised Dutch 
in New York, Swedes in 
Delaware, and Germans 
in Pennsylvania. But 
neither France, Holland, 
Sweden, nor Germany con¬ 
tributed largely to the set¬ 
tlement of the Thirteen 
Colonies. 

118. The Thirteen 
Colonies 


Poor Richard, 1733 . 

AN 

Almanack 

For the Year of Chrift 

l 7 3 3’ 

Being the Firft after LEAP YEAR: 

And makes fine* the Creation Years 

By the Account of the Eaftern Creeks 7241 

By the Latin Church, when O ent. y* 6932 
By the Computation of W.JV j 742 

By the Roman Chronology 
By the Je<w'tlb Rabbies 5494 

Wherein is contained 
The Lunations, Eclipfes, Judgment of 

the Weather, Spring Tides, Planets Motions & 
mutual Afpe&s, Sun and Moons Riling and Set¬ 
ting, Length of Days, Time of High Water, 
Fairs, Courts, and obfcrvable Days 
Fitted to the Latitude of Forty Degrees, 
and a Meridian of Five Hours Weft from London, 
but may without fcnfihle Error, ferve all the ad¬ 
jacent Places, even from Newfoundland to South- 
Carolina. 

By RICHJRD SJUNDBRS, Phiiom. 

PHILADELPHIA: 
printed and fold by B. FKANKL/X, at the New 
_Printing Office near the Market. 

The Third Iroprcflion.' 


A Title-page oe “ Poor Richard’s 
Almanac ” 

Reduced facsimile. 

colonies, not, however, without quaint modifications of spelling 
and pronunciation introduced by emigrants from different 
parts of the mother country. The emigrants also brought 
many proverbs and traditional sayings, some of which were 


The 

Language 
and folk- 
literature 


English language 
prevailed al¬ 
most every¬ 
where in the 











The Thirteen Colonies 


407 


afterward printed by Benjamin Franklin in Poor Richard's 
Almanac. Old ballads, once sung in medieval England, were 
chanted in colonial America. Old fairy tales and nursery 
rhymes, which had delighted generations of English children, 
found equally appreciative audiences in the American wilder¬ 
ness. These varieties of folk-literature were not at first 
written down, but 
were carried in the 
memory by young 
and old. Nearly all 
the popular festivals 
of the colonists came 
from England. The 
only important excep¬ 
tion was Thanks¬ 
giving Day, which 
the Pilgrims began to 
celebrate immediately X. 
after their first har¬ 
vest. Many super¬ 
stitions of the Middle 
Ages, including those 
relating to astrology, 
unlucky days, de¬ 
mons, and magic 
(§92), crossed the 
Atlantic to the New 
World. The belief 
in witchcraft was 
likewise very common, and at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, 
twenty persons suffered death for this supposed crime. Witch¬ 
craft persecutions also occured in several other colonies. 

Almost every variety of Protestantism was represented in the 
colonies. The Church of England from the start had its strong¬ 
holds in Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas, 
and later in New York. After the Revolutionary 
War it took the name of the Protestant Episcopal Church, but 



Time cuts down all 
Both great and ftiiaiL 

Ufitffc’ibeaureoasW i ft 
Made David leek his 
Lift* 

Whaler in the Sea 
Cod's Voice obey. 


Xerxes the great did 
die. 

And fo mull you & I, 

Toutb forward flips 
Death foonett 

Zacheus be 
Did climb the Tree 
Lord to fee. 


A Page erom the “ New England Primer 

Reduced facsimile. 


Religion 













408 


Commerce and Colonies 


retained nearly all the Anglican doctrines and ceremonies. 
Puritanism flourished in New England, especially in Massachu¬ 
setts and Connecticut. Baptists were numerous in Rhode 
Island, and Quakers in Pennsylvania. 

The Puritan clergy were generally well educated, and some 
of them were very learned. They introduced into the New 
Higher World the English tradition in favor of higher 


education education. Harvard College was founded as early 
as 1636, and Yale, in 1701. Before the Revolution colleges or 
universities also existed in Rhode Island (Brown), New Hamp- 



Harvard College in the Eighteenth Century 

After an early picture in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 


shire (Dartmouth), New York (King’s, later Columbia), New 
Jersey (Rutgers and Princeton), Pennsylvania (University of 
Pennsylvania), and Virginia (William and Mary 1 ). These 
institutions devoted themselves chiefly to the training of minis¬ 
ters. 

New England led the other colonies in popular education. A 
Massachusetts law, enacted as early as 1647, required every 
Common town of fifty families to establish an elementary 

schools school where children could learn to read and write. 

The teachers were to be paid either by the parents of the children 
or by public taxation. Every town of one hundred families was 

1 Named after King William III and his queen (§ in). 


















Economic Development of the Colonies 409 

further required to set up a grammar school, in which students 
might be prepared for college. This law became the model for 
similar legislation throughout the United States. The middle 
and southern colonies did not have a system of free public 
education. 

119. Economic Development of the Colonies 

Farming was the chief occupation in colonial times. The 
colonials not only fed themselves, but also exported large 
quantities of wheat, rice, tobacco, indigo, and other Colonial 
products to the West Indies and the mother coun- agriculture 
try. Many vegetables and fruits known in Europe early made 
their way to America, but did not displace the native potato in 
importance. The clearing of the land for agriculture led to a 
large export of lumber in the shape of boards, shingles, masts, 
and spars, and to the production of naval stores, such as tar, 
pitch, and turpentine. Cattle raising was carried on to a consid¬ 
erable extent, especially in the southern colonies. New Eng¬ 
land found a source of wealth in its fisheries of cod, mackerel, 
and whale, while all the colonies enjoyed a very profitable trade 
in furs. 

Different systems of land holding existed in colonial America. 

Small farms generally prevailed in New England and the middle 

colonies. In New York, however, there were T ,, , 

. . Land holding 

extensive estates on the Hudson, originally 
granted to the Dutch colonists and by them subdivided and 
rented out to tenant farmers. No aristocrats in America so 
nearly resembled the feudal nobility of the Old World as these 
Dutch proprietors, or patroons. Virginia and Maryland proved 
to be well adapted to tobacco farming on a large scale. The 
colonists settled, not in compact villages, but in great planta¬ 
tions along the banks of the rivers. As time went on, the size 
of the plantations steadily increased and rose as high as twenty 
thousand acres. They were cultivated by white servants and 
negro slaves, neither of whom had any rights in the soil. The 
outcome of these conditions was social inequality and the 


4io 


Commerce and Colonies 


growth of an aristocratic class of planters. A similar aristoc¬ 
racy grew up in the Carolinas and Georgia, where rice and 
indigo competed with tobacco as staple crops. 

The development of the colonies created a keen demand for 
unskilled labor. Laborers were few and wages were high. 
White On New England farms and those in the middle 

servants colonies the work was largely performed by the 

owner and the members of his family, sometimes with the 
assistance of hired “help.” Indentured 1 white servants also 

formed an im¬ 
portant element 
in many colonies, 
particularly in 
Virginia, Mary¬ 
land, and Pennsyl¬ 
vania. The prev¬ 
alence of negro 
slavery in the 
South made it diffi- 

New York Colonial Paper Money cult for indentured 

servants to find 

profitable and honorable employment after the expiration of 
their term of service. 

The first negroes arrived in 1619 — a fateful date in American 
history — from a Dutch ship which touched at Jamestown. 
Negro Thus began the African slave trade, which was to 

slavery be carried on for nearly two hundred years. Slaves 

were brought from the West Indies and afterward direct from 
Africa to the colonies. They were least numerous in New Eng¬ 
land, not because of any widespread moral sentiment against 
keeping them, but simply because New England had no planta¬ 
tions of tobacco, rice, and cotton on which their labor could be 
profitably employed. 

The contrasts between North and South in systems of land 
tenure and labor make it easy to understand why Maryland, 

1 An indenture is a contract by which an apprentice is bound to a master, or a 
servant to service .in a colony. 


r D'VWLaw of the Colony of ("Numb. }?9 & 

JVeio-Yorl, this Bill s hall ,——. — 

fe# pafs current Vtr for.- FIVE S ^ " 

fjjjj POUNDS. M New York. | 
the Second Day of April ,• Onej 
Thoufand Seven Hundred and jiffy ** 

Kin*, . 






















Political Development of the Colonies 411 


Virginia, and the Carolinas remained chiefly agricultural during 
the colonial era, while Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachu¬ 
setts developed both manufactures and commerce. Co i onial 
There were many household industries, such as manufactures 
making nails and other small articles of iron, andcommerce 
pottery, wooden implements, shoes, and coarse textiles. The 
distillation of molasses into rum, much of which was sent 
to West Africa in exchange for slaves, formed a profitable 
business. Shipbuilding 
became a very impor¬ 
tant industry in New 
England. That section 
also had an extensive 
commerce with other col¬ 
onies, the West Indies, 
and Europe. The devel¬ 
opment of manufactures 
in the colonies was re¬ 
tarded by lack of capital 
and credit, scarcity of 
labor, high wages, and 
the greater profits often 
to be gained from agri¬ 
culture, lumbering, and the fisheries. 

120. Political Development of the Colonies 

All the colonists possessed the private rights which Englishmen 
had won during centuries of struggle against despotic kings. 
Free speech, freedom from arbitrary imprisonment The private 
as secured by the writ of habeas corpus (§ hi), and rights of Eng- 
trial by jury formed part of our inheritance from Ushmen 
England. These and other private rights were embodied 
in the Common Law, as introduced into colonial America. At 
the time of the Revolution the Common Law was adopted by 
the several states, thus becoming the foundation of our own 
legal system. 

The English principle of representation was also carried to the 



Benjamin Franklin 

After a medallion by Nini in the National Portrait 
Gallery, London. 


412 


Commerce and Colonies 


New World. Each colony had a representative assembly 
modeled after the House of Commons. Virginia early led the 
Representa- wa Y> wlt h t ^ ie establishment in 1619 of the House 
tive assem- of Burgesses, which consisted of deputies freely 
bUes elected by the inhabitants of each settlement. 

A few years later the freemen of each Massachusetts town were 
allowed to send two deputies to act for them at the General 
Court of the colony. New York, which had been a Dutch pos¬ 
session, was the last of the colonies to adopt representative 
self-government. 

The assemblies of Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, and the 
other colonies were more truly representative of the great body of 
The the people than was the English Parliament of the 

franchise period. In England, a small number of persons — 
nobles, country squires, and rich merchants — controlled elec¬ 
tions to the House of Commons. In the colonies all free 
adult white men, who owned a moderate amount of property, 
usually had the right to vote. Religious qualifications, limiting 
the franchise to Protestants, also existed in some of the 
colonies. 

The separation of Parliament into two houses, which had 
prevailed in England since the fourteenth century, accustomed 
The bi- the colonists to the bicameral system. In all but 

cameral two of the colonies the legislature consisted of a 

representative assembly, forming a lower house, 
and a small council, forming an upper house. 1 The council 
assisted the governor and had some power of amending the acts 
of the assembly. 

The unit of representation in the assemblies of the southern 
colonies was the county, corresponding to the English shire. 
County and The coun ty also formed a judicial area. Justices 
town gov- of the peace, chosen from the more important land- 
owners of the county, met regularly as a court to 
try cases and assess taxes. The citizens of a New England town, 
or township, governed themselves directly and sent their own 

1 Pennsylvania and Georgia did not adopt the bicameral system until after the 
Revolution. 


Rivalry of the French and English 


4i3 


representatives to the colonial assemblies. They discussed in 
frequent town meetings all local affairs, made appropriations for 
all local expenses, and chose the town officials. The titles of 
these officials, as well as their functions, were often borrowed 
from the mother-land, showing that the colonists reproduced on 
American soil the characteristic features of old English local 
government. The middle colonies adopted a mixture of the 
New England and southern systems. Here both town and 
county were found, each with its elective officers. 

No close political ties united the 
colonies. The differences between 
them in industries, Disunion of 
religion, manners, and the colonists 
customs prevented their effective 
cooperation. Yet there had been 
preparation for union and signs 
of its coming. As early as 1643 
Massachusetts, Connecticut, New 
Haven (then a separate colony), 
and Plymouth entered into a 
league ‘.Tor .mutual help and 
strength in all our future concern¬ 
ments.” This league, known as the United Colonies of New 
England, held together for forty years. Delegates from seven 
colonies met in the Albany Congress of 1754 and discussed 
Benjamin Franklin’s plan for forming a defensive union of 
all the colonies against the power of France. The plan fell 
through, but it set men to thinking about the advantages of 
federation. 

121. Rivalry of the French and English in North America 

The struggle between France and England began, both in 
the Old World and the New, in 1689, when the “Glorious Revo¬ 
lution” drove out James II and placed William of Europea n 
Orange on the English throne as William III and colonial 
(§ in). The Dutch and English, who had previ- wars 
ously been enemies, now became friends and united in resistance 



A device printed in Franklin’s news¬ 
paper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, shows 
a wriggling rattlesnake cut into pieces, 
with the initial letter of a colony on each 
piece. 









414 


Commerce and Colonies 


Provisions 
of the Peace 
of Utrecht, 
1713 

Mississippi. 


to Louis XIV. The French king not only threatened the Dutch, 
but also angered the English by receiving the fugitive James 
and aiding him in efforts to win back his crown. England at 
once joined a league of the states of Europe against France. 
The struggle extended beyond the Continent, for each of the 
rivals tried to destroy the commerce and annex the colonies of 
the other. 

The first period Qf conflict closed in 1713, with the Peace of 
Utrecht. England secured Newfoundland, Acadia (rechristened 
Nova Scotia), and the extensive region drained by 
the rivers flowing into Hudson Bay. France, how¬ 
ever, kept the best part of her American territories 
and retained control of the St. Lawrence and the 
The possession of these two waterways gave her a 
strong strategic position in the interior of the continent. 

The two great European wars which came between 1740 and 
1763 were naturally reflected in the New World. The War of 
King the Austrian Succession, known in American his- 

Warandthe t0I T aS George’s War, proved to be indeci- 

French and sive. The Seven Years’ War, similarly known as 
Indian War the French and Indian War, resulted in the expul¬ 
sion of the French from North America. France had no resources 
to cope with those of England in America, and the English com¬ 
mand of the sea proved decisive. One French post after another 
was captured. Wolfe defeated the gallant Montcalm under the 
walls of Quebec and the fall of that stronghold quickly followed. 
What remained of the French army at Montreal also surrendered. 
The British flag was now raised over Canada, where it has flown 
ever since. 

The second period of conflict closed in 1763, with the Peace 
of Paris. France ceded to England all her North American 
Provisions possessions east of the Mississippi, except two 

Peace of small islands kept for fishing purposes off the coast 

Paris, 1763 of Newfoundland. Spain, which had also been 
involved in the war, gave up Florida to England, receiving as 
compensation the French territories west of the Mississippi. 
New France was now only a memory. But modern Canada has 




Rivalry of the French and English 


4i5 


two millions of Frenchmen, who still hold aloof from the British 
in language and religion, while Louisiana, though shrunk to the 
dimensions of an American state, still retains in its laws and in 
many customs of its people the French tradition. 

The Peace of Paris marked a turning point in the history 
of the Thirteen Colonies. Relieved of pressure England and 
from without and free to expand toward the west the Thirteen 
and south, they now felt less keenly their depend- Colomes 
ence on England. Close ties, the ties of common interests, com- 


European and Colonial Wars, 1689-1783 


In Europe 

Dates 

Contestants 

Treaty 

In America 

War of the 
League of 
Augsburg 

1689-1697 

France vs. Great 
Britain, Hol¬ 
land, Spain, 
Austria, 

Sweden, etc. 

Ryswick 

King Wil¬ 
liam’s War 

War of the 
Spanish 
Succession 

1701-1713 

France, Spain, 

Bavaria vs. 

Great Britain, 
Holland, Aus¬ 
tria, Portugal, 
Savoy, Prussia, 
etc. 

Utrecht and 
Rastatt 

Queen 

Anne’s 

War 

War of the 
Austrian 
Succession 

1740-1748 

Prussia, France, 
Spain, Bavaria 
vs. Austria, 

Great Britain, 
Holland 

Aix-la- 

Chapelle 

King 

George’s 

War 

(* 744 - 

1748) 

Seven Years’ 
War 

1756-1763 

Prussia, Great 

Britain vs. 
Austria, France, 
Russia, Sweden, 
Saxony 

Paris and 
Hubertus- 
burg 

French and 
Indian 

War 

(i 754 - 

1763) 

War of the 
American 
Revolution 

1776-1783 

Great Britain vs. 
United States, 
France, Spain, 
Holland 

Paris and 
Versailles 



















416 


Commerce and Colonies 


mon ideals, and a common origin, still attached them to the 
mother country; but these were soon to be rudely broken by the 
American Revolution. 


122. The American Revolution 


English colonists in the New World had long been drawing 
apart from Englishmen in the Old World. The political train- 
Preparation i n g rece i ye d by the colonists in their local meetings 
forinde- and provincial assemblies fitted them for self- 

pendence government, while the hard conditions of life in 

America fostered their energy, self-reliance, and impatience of 
restraint. The important part which they played in the con¬ 
quest of Canada gave them confidence in their military abilities 
and showed them the value of cooperation. Renewed inter¬ 
ference of Great Britain in what they deemed their private con¬ 
cerns before long called forth their united resistance. 

Some of the grievances of which the colonists complained 
were the outcome of the British colonial policy. The home 
Restrictions government discouraged the manufacture in the 
colonies of goods that could be made in England. 
Parliament, for instance, prohibited the export 
of woolens, not only to the British Isles and the Continent, 
but also from one colony to another, and forbade the colonists 
to set up mills for making wrought iron or its finished products. 
Such regulations aimed to give British manufacturers a monop¬ 
oly of the colonial markets. 

The home government also interfered with the commerce of 
the colonies. As early as 1660 Parliament passed a “Navi- 
Restrictions gation Act” providing that sugar, tobacco, cotton, 
on colonial and indigo might not be exported direct from the 
commerce colonies to foreign countries, but must be first 
brought to England, where duties were paid on them. A sub¬ 
sequent Act required all imports into the colonies from Conti¬ 
nental Europe to have been actually shipped from an English 
port, thus compelling the colonists to go to England for their 
supplies. 


on colonial 
manufactures 


The American Revolution 


4 i 7 


All this legislation was not so repressive as one would suppose, 
partly because it was so constantly evaded and partly because 
Great Britain formed the natural market for most colonial prod¬ 
ucts. Moreover, the home government gave Alleviations 
some special favors in the shape of “bounties,” and com- 
or sums of money to encourage the production of P ensatlons 
food and raw materials needed in Great Britain. Twenty-four 
colonial industries were aided in this manner. Colonial shipping 
was also fostered, for ships built in the colonies enjoyed the 
same exclusive privileges in the carrying trade as British- 
built ships. In fact, the' restrictions which the American 
colonists had to endure were light, com¬ 
pared with the shackles laid by Spain and 
France upon their colonial possessions. 

It must always be remembered, finally, that 
Great Britain defended the colonists in re¬ 
turn for trade privileges. As long as her 
help was needed against the French, they 
did not protest seriously against the legis¬ 
lation of Parliament. 

After the close of the Seven Years’ War 
George III and his ministers determined 
to keep British troops in America as a protection against out¬ 
breaks by the French or Indians. The colonists, The Stamp 
to whose safety an army would add, were expected ^ xown- 
to pay for its partial support. Parliament, accord- shend Acts 
ingly, took steps to enforce the laws regulating colonial com¬ 
merce and also passed the Stamp Act (1765). The protests 
of the colonists led to the repeal of this obnoxious measure, 
but it was soon replaced by the Townshend Acts (1767), levy¬ 
ing duties on certain commodities imported into America. 
These Acts, in turn, were repealed three years later. Parlia¬ 
ment, however, kept a small duty on tea, in order that the 
colonists might not think that it had abandoned its assumed 
right to tax them. 

The Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts thus brought up 
the whole question as to the extent of parliamentary control 



A Stamp of 1765 


4*8 


Commerce and Colonies 


over the colonists. They argued that taxes could be rightfully 
voted only by their own representative assemblies. It was a 
“ No tax- natural attitude for them to take, since Parliament, 
sitting three thousand miles away, had little insight 
into American affairs. The British view was that 
Parliament really represented all Englishmen and hence might 
tax them wherever they lived. This view can also be under¬ 
stood, for the “Glorious Revolution” had definitely established 

i*. /f Jt Emvu ■ 


ation with¬ 
out repre¬ 
sentation ” 


t/^UYN. V 7 
dLU*otu*.lht. nt 


& Cxxjs? dj fr^aXusrC. V Jj /vvlwrC 4 o. ot -tcjjk-cAz 

to }U JjuXas*. i 

t J&LcM. imfytA, fhmn.~to f<iV 1^ ii n i^i j<pwiL5£um. 








Ct^-oJIk -ilaaAz ^ A. JCC< 4 S*<' j t y 0 


(UAxJtioL 


Osm&TLj 


f"Cfc c<rrv<U/TV^ ^7 /C. J ^ tr> ->tn. ^ 

r ^ Tr -£/- - JLtjb~iXtu^4, /j i/t ^ 'TT^/kX- t/J 

Opening Lines of the Declaration of Independence 

A reduced facsimile of the first lines of Jefferson’s original draft. 


the supremacy of Parliament in England (§ hi). In any case, 
however, taxation of the colonies was clearly contrary to custom 
and very unwise in the face of the popular feeling which it 
aroused in America. 

Some British statesmen themselves took up the cause of the 
colonists. Edmund Burke, the great Irish orator, declared 
Attitude that the idea of a virtual representation of America 
of British in Parliament was “the most contemptible idea 
that ever entered the head of a man.” Even 
William Pitt (then earl of Chatham), while maintaining the 
right of Parliament to legislate for America, applauded the 
“manly wisdom and calm resolution” displayed by the colonists. 









The American Revolution 


419 


But these were the voices of a minority, of a helpless minority. 
Parliament was then utterly unrepresentative of the people and 
was packed with the supporters of George III (the “ king’s 
friends”)- To this would-be despot, therefore, belongs the 
chief responsibility for the measures of oppression which pro¬ 
voked the resistance of the Thirteen Colonies. 

The colonists were so opposed to the principle of parliamen¬ 
tary taxation that they refused to buy tea from British merchants 
and in Boston even boarded a tea ship and threw Declaration 
the cargo into the water. Parliament replied to the of independ- 
“Boston Tea Party” by closing the harbor of that ence ’ 1776 
city to commerce and by depriving Massachusetts of self-govern¬ 
ment. These measures, instead of bringing the stubborn colony 
to terms, only aroused the fears of her neighbors and led to the 
meeting of delegates from all the colonies, except Georgia, in the 
First Continental Congress. It recommended a policy of non¬ 
intercourse with Great Britain until the colonists had recovered 
their “just rights and liberties.” The Second Congress, which 
met after blood had been shed at Lexington and Concord, pre¬ 
pared for war and appointed George Washington to command 
the colonial forces. On July 4, 1776, after the failure of all plans 
for conciliation with the mother country, it declared that 
“these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and 
independent states.” 

No colony at first contained a large majority in favor of 
separation, and even after the Declaration of Independence 
numerous loyalists, or “Tories,” continued to favor The 
the British cause. After the conclusion of peace “Tones” 
the “Tories” emigrated in great numbers to Canada, where 
they were the first English settlers. They prospered in their 
new home, and their descendants, who form a considerable part 
of the Canadian population, are to-day among the most devoted 
members of the British Empire. 

Even had the colonists been unanimous in resistance to 
Great Britain, they stood little chance of winning against a 
wealthy country with a population nearly three times their 
own, trained armies aided by German mercenaries, and a power- 


420 


Commerce and Colonies 


ful navy. When, however, the resources of France were thrown 
into the scale, the issue became less doubtful. France, still 
The French smarting fr6m the losses suffered in the Seven 
alliance, Years’ War, desired to recover as much as pos¬ 
sible of her colonial dominions and secretly aided 
the Americans with money and supplies for some time before 
the victory at Saratoga led her to enter into a formal alliance 
with them. 


The war now merged into a European conflict, in which 
France was joined by Spain and Holland. Great Britain 



Signatures oe the Treaty of Paris, 1783 

From the original document in the Department of State, Washington. 


needed all her reserve power to prevent rebellion in Ireland, 
defend Gibraltar, and keep her possessions in the West Indies 
Close of and India. The struggle in America practically 
lutionary" closed in 1781, when Cornwallis, blockaded at York- 

War town by a French fleet and closely invested by the 

combined French and American armies, surrendered the largest 
British force still in the colonies. Nearly two years passed, 
however, before the contestants made peace. 

The Treaty of Paris between Great Britain and the United 
Treaties of States recognized the independence of the former 
Versailles Thirteen Colonies and fixed their boundaries at 

1783 Canada and the Great Lakes, the Atlantic Ocean, 

Florida, and the Mississippi River. The Treaty of Versailles 






The American Revolution 


421 



C?' L - 

ST '°n?r»' X 

<■ S *Fr- 

q iJr.» -B-. 
DU. ° T^O^Br. 
«t0BA 9 AO^<^- 

—*** Span. 


North America after the Peace of Paris, 1783 a.d. 


between Great Britain, France, and Spain restored to France a 
few colonial possessions and gave to Spain the Florida territory 
(§ 121). Holland, which concluded a separate peace with Great 
Britain, was obliged to cede to that country some stations in 





































































422 


Commerce and Colonies 


India and to throw open to British merchants the valuable trade 
of the East Indies. 

The successful revolt of the Thirteen Colonies dealt a stag¬ 
gering blow at the old colonial policy. The Americans continued 
Effects of to t ra de with the mother country from self-interest, 
American although they were no longer compelled to do so by 
independence j aw The regu p was ^ r itish commerce with 

the United States doubled within fifteen years after the close of 
the Revolutionary War. This formed an object-lesson on the 
uselessness of commercial restrictions. 

The American War of Independence reacted almost at once 
on Europe. The Declaration of Independence, setting forth 
America the “unalienable rights of man” as against feudal 
teaching privilege and oppression, provided eager leaders 
by example jr rance w jth. a formula of liberty which they were 
not slow in applying to their own country. The French Revolu¬ 
tion of 1789 was the child of the American Revolution. Early 
in the nineteenth century still another revolutionary move¬ 
ment stripped Spain and Portugal of all their continental 
possessions in the New World. America was, indeed, teaching 
by example. 


123. Formation of the United States 


The Continental Congress, which had framed the Declara¬ 
tion of Independence in 1776, continued to govern the United 
Articles of States until the adoption of the Articles of Con- 
Confedera- federation in 1781. The Articles established a 
mere league of states. The authority of Congress 
was practically limited to war, peace, and foreign affairs. It 
could not levy taxes, could not regulate interstate commerce, 
and had no power to enforce obedience on either a state or an 
individual. Every attempt to amend the Articles by legislative 
action failed, and the weak and clumsy government which they 
had set up threatened to collapse. 

Such were the distressing circumstances under which the 
Federal Convention met at Philadelphia in May, 1787. To this 



WASHINGTON 
After the painting by Gilbert Stuart. 
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 





































































Formation of the United States 423 

body the states sent fifty-five delegates, including Washington, 
who presided, Franklin, James Madison, and Alex- The Federal 
ander Hamilton. Instead of merely amending Convention, 
the Articles, they prepared an entirely new con- 1787 
stitution. This task took them four months. 

Necessary though the Constitution was, if the American 
people were not to face anarchy and civil war, it satisfied 
neither the advocates of states’ rights nor the ex- Ratification 
treme democrats. Nearly a year passed before constitution 
eleven states ratified the instrument. North Caro- 1787-1789 
lina and Rhode Island did not ratify it until after the inaugura¬ 
tion of Washington as President in 1789. 

The concessions made to the opponents of the Constitution, 
as originally framed, were embodied in the first ten amendments. 
These provided for religious freedom, the separa- The first ten 
tion of Church and State, free speech, a free press, amendments, 
the privileges of assembly and petition, the right to 
bear arms, speedy and public jury trials, and other safeguards 
of personal liberty. In short, the amendments were a Bill of 
Rights (§ hi) for the American people. 

The Constitution, in many features, reflects the political 
experience of the colonists and their familiarity with British 
methods of government. Accustomed to a legisla- Sources of 
ture of two chambers, they kept this arrangement the Consti- 
in the Senate and House of Representatives, but tutl0n 
made the upper, as well as the lower, chamber elective. The 
President’s powers of military command, appointment, and 
veto resembled those of the colonial governor, but the framers 
of the Constitution made the Presidency an elective office. 
The national courts resembled those of the colonies. The 
Supreme Court, with it power of declaring Acts of Congress 
unconstitutional, was modeled on the Privy Council of Great 
Britain, which had formerly exercised the right of annulling 
Acts of the colonial assemblies. 

The new federal government was not completely democratic 
in character. The Constitution, instead of providing for the 
election of a President by direct vote of the people, set up the 


424 


Commerce and Colonies 


machinery of the Electoral College, which still functions. Sim¬ 
ilarly, members of the Senate were chosen by the state legis- 
The Consti- latures, but this rule has now been changed by the 
tution and recent adoption of a constitutional amendment 
democracy providing for popular election of senators. The 
Constitution itself can be amended only slowly and with 
much difficulty. As a matter of fact, there have been only 
nineteen amendments altogether, and ten of these were made at 
one time. However, the progress of democratic sentiment in 
the country at large since 1789 has tended to democratize the 
Constitution. The extension of the suffrage first to poor men, 
who were formerly excluded by a property qualification, then 
to negroes (after the Civil War), and finally to women (in 1920) 
means that practically every adult citizen now enjoys the right 
to vote, not only in state elections, but also in federal elections 
for senators, representatives, and presidential electors. Universal 
suffrage in the states secures political democracy in the nation. 


124 . Progress of Geographical Discovery 

Great Britain soon found at least partial compensation for 
the loss of the Thirteen Colonies in the occupation of Australia 
Early ex- and the ^ands °f the Pacific. That vast ocean, 

pioration of covering more than one-third of the globe, remained 
the Pacific little known to Europeans until the latter part of 
the eighteenth century. Soon after Magellan’s voyage the 
Spaniards established a regular commercial route between 
Mexico and the Philippines and gradually discovered some of the 
archipelagoes which stud the intervening' seas. Sir Francis 
Drake’s circumnavigation of the world (1577-1580) first drew 
the attention of Englishmen to the Pacific Ocean, but a long 
time passed before they began its systematic exploration. 

The unveiling of the Pacific was closely connected with the 
The “ Great Antarctic problem. Geographers from the time of 
South the Greeks had a vague idea that a region of 

continental proportions lay southeast of the Indian 
Ocean. The idea found expression in Ptolemy’s map of the 












80° 100° 120° 140° 160° 180° 160° 140° 120° 


















































































































































































Progress of Geographical Discovery 425 


world (§ 61 ), and Marco Polo during his stay in China heard 
about it. After the Dutch became established in the East 
Indies, they made renewed search for the “Great South Land” 
and carefully explored the western coast of Australia, or “New 
Holland.” 

In 1642 the Dutch East India Company sent Abel Tasman 
from Batavia to investigate the real extent of Australia. Tas¬ 
man’s two voyages — among the most .notable on Tasman’s 
record — led to the discovery of Van Diemen’s 1642^43 
Land (Tasmania) and New Zealand, and proved 1644 
conclusively that Australia had no connection with the supposed 
Antarctic conti¬ 
nent . 1 The Dutch, 
however, mani¬ 
fested little inter¬ 
est in the regions 
which they had 
found, and more 
than one hundred 
years passed be¬ 
fore Tasman’s 
work was contin¬ 
ued by Captain 
James Cook. 

This famous 
navigator, the son 

of a farm laborer, entered the British navy at an early age and 
by his unaided efforts rose to high command. Cook’s 
Cook’s first voyage in the Pacific resulted in the ^Jp^dfic, 
exploration of the coast of New Zealand and the 1768-1779 
eastern shore of Australia. The second voyage finally settled 
the question as to the existence of a southern continent, for 
Cook sailed three times across the Pacific Ocean without finding 
it. At the instance of George III, Cook undertook a third 
voyage to locate, if possible, an opening on the coast of Alaska 
which would lead into Hudson Bay. He followed the American 

1 For Tasman’s route see the map on page 562. 



The “ Discovery ” 

Captain Cook’s ship in his last voyage. When this drawing 
was made, the ship was being used as a coaling-vessel at New¬ 
castle: hence the addition of steam funnels. 






426 


Commerce and Colonies 


coast through Bering Strait until an unbroken ice field barred 
further progress. On the return from the Arctic region Cook 
visited the Hawaiian Islands, where he was murdered by the 
natives. 

Captain Cook on his third voyage was the first British navi¬ 
gator to sight Alaska. Here, however, he had been preceded 
Bering’s by the Russians, who reached the Pacific by way 
1728-1729 Siberia and the Arctic Ocean. It still remained 

1741 uncertain whether or not Siberia was joined to the 

northern part of the New World. Peter the Great, who showed 
a keen interest in geographical discovery, commissioned Vitus 
Bering, a Dane in the Russian service, to solve the problem. 
Bering explored the strait and sea named after him and made 
clear the relation between North America and Asia. 

The eighteenth century thus added greatly to man’s knowl¬ 
edge of the world. Cook’s voyages, in particular, left the main 
Scientific outlines of the southern part of the globe substan- 
expioration tially as they are known to-day. From this time 
systematic exploration for scientific purposes more and more 
took the place of voyages by private adventurers for the sake of 
warfare or plunder. Geographical-discovery must be included, 
therefore, among the influences which made the eighteenth 
century so conspicuously an age of enlightenment. 

Studies 

i. What was meant by the saying that colonies were “ like so many 
farms of the mother country”? 2. According to the mercantile 
theory, what constituted a “ favorable ” and what an “ unfavorable ” 
balance of trade? 3. How was the colonial policy based on mercan¬ 
tilism opposed to modern ideas of commercial freedom? 4. Why was 
the joint-stock company a more successful method of fostering colonial 
trade than the regulated company? 5. Name the principal English 
trading companies and indicate in what regions they operated (map 
facing page 394). 6. Show that the seventeenth century belonged 

commercially to the Dutch, as the sixteenth century had belonged 
to the Portuguese and Spaniards. 7. On the map (page 397) 
indicate what East Indian islands still remain in Dutch possession. 
8. Why was it possible for European powers to secure dominions in 
India? 9. Identify these dates in American colonial history: 1607; 


Progress of Geographical Discovery 427 


1620; 1713; 1763; 1776; 1783; and 1789. 10. “ The breaking of 

Spain’s power is an incident of the first importance in the history of the 
English colonies.” Comment on this statement. n. Show that as 
a result of the Seven Years’ War “ the kingdom of Great Britain became 
the British Empire.” 12. What is meant by the “ transit of civiliza¬ 
tion ” from England to America? 13. Compare the social and indus¬ 
trial conditions in the South with those in New England during the 
colonial period. 14. Show that “ no taxation without representation ” 
was a slogan which could hardly have arisen in any but an English 
country. 15. Mention some of the accusations against George III 
as set forth in the Declaration of Independence. 16. “ The Declara¬ 
tion of Independence was the formal announcement of democratic ideas 
that had their tap-root in English soil.” Comment on this statement. 
17. “ The history of the origin and development of the American nation 
is one chapter in the history of the development of English freedom.” 
Comment on this statement. 18. In what sense was the American 
Revolution “ a civil war within the British Empire ”? 19. Trace on 

the map (page 421) the boundaries of the United States in 1783. 
20. Show that the Constitution of the United States established, not 
a confederation, but a federal state. 21. Trace on the map (between 
pages 424-425) the three voyages of Captain Cook. 



Penn’s Cottage, Philadelphia 

This was the first brick building erected (1682) in Philadelphia. It is now in Fairmount 
Park. 







CHAPTER XIV 


ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION 


125 . Improvements in Manufacturing 


The year 1776, the year of the Declaration of Independence, 
also marks, approximately, the commencement of those great 
An industrial changes in manufacturing, transportation, com- 
a £ e merce, and agriculture which, within a century and 

a half, have made over and are still making over modern life. 
They started in Great Britain, spread thence to the Continent 
and the United States, and now extend throughout the civilized 
world. We live in an age of machinery, of invention, and of 
applied science unlike any previous epoch in history. Ours is an 
industrial age. 

Great Britain took the lead in the new industrial movement. 
Her damp climate proved to be very favorable to the manufac- 
Primacy of ture textiles, her swift streams supplied abun- 
Great Britain dant water power for machinery, and beneath her 
m industry so q j a y stores of coal and iron ore. There were 
other favoring circumstances. Industry in Great Britain was 
less fettered by guild restrictions than on the Continent. She 
possessed more surplus capital for investment, more skilled 
laborers, and a larger merchant marine than any other country. 
Furthermore, Great Britain had come out from the Seven Years’ 
War victorious over all her rivals for maritime and commercial 
supremacy. Her trade in the markets of the world grew by 
leaps and bounds after 1763. The enormous demand for 
British goods in its turn stimulated the mechanical genius of 
British artisans and so produced the era of the great inventions. 

Man has advanced from savagery to civilization chiefly 
428 


Improvements in Manufacturing 


429 


through invention. Beginning in prehistoric times, he slowly 
discovered how to supplement hands and feet and teeth and nails 
by the use of tools. It was a forward step from ^ 
the tool to the machine, which, when supplied 
with muscular energy, only needed to be directed by man to do 
his work. The highest type of machine is one driven by natural 
forces — by wind, waterfall, steam, gas, or electricity. The 
invention of tools and machinery thus gives to man an ever- 
increasing control over nature. 

A list of prehistoric tools and machines would include many 
kinds of implements, first of stone and then of metal: levers, 
rollers, and wedges; bows-and-arrows, slings, and Development 
lassos; oars, sails, and rudders; fishing nets, of invention 
lines, and hooks; the plow and the wheeled cart; the needle, 
bellows, and potter’s wheel; the distaff and spindle for spinning; 
and the hand loom for weaving. Few important additions 
were made to this list in antiquity, even by such cultivated 
peoples as the Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans. 
The Middle Ages were also singularly barren of inventions. 
It was only toward the close of the medieval period that gun¬ 
powder, the mariner’s compass, paper, and movable type reached 
Europe from Asia (§91). More progress took place during 
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which produced the 
telescope, microscope, thermometer and barometer, clocks and 
watches, sawmills driven by wind or water, an improved form 
of the windmill, and the useful though humble wheelbarrow. 
Manufacturing and transportation continued, however, to be 
carried on in much the same primitive way as before the dawn 
of history. 

The revolution in manufacturing began with the textile indus¬ 
try. Old-fashioned spinning formed a slow, laborious process. 
The wool, flax, or cotton, having been fastened to a Old-fashioned 
stick called the distaff, was twisted by hand into spinning 
yarn or thread and wound upon a spindle. The spinning wheel 
— long known in India and not unknown in Europe as early as 
the fourteenth century — afterward came into general use. 
The spinner now no longer held the spindle in her hand, but set 


430 


Economic Transformation 


it upon a frame and connected it by a belt to the wheel, which, 
when revolved, turned the spindle. The later addition of a 
treadle to move the wheel freed both hands of the spinner, so 
that she could twist two threads instead of one. 

Weaving was done on the hand 
loom, a wooden frame to which verti- 
Oid-fashioned cal threads (the warp) 
weaving were attached. Horizon¬ 
tal threads (the weft or woof) were 
inserted by means of an enlarged needle 
or shuttle. The invention of the 
“flying shuttle” in the eighteenth cen¬ 
tury enabled the operator, by pulling 
a cord, to jerk the shuttle back and 
forth without the aid of an assistant. 
This simple device not only saved 
labor but also doubled the speed of 
weaving. 

The demand for thread and yarn 
quickly outran the supply, for the 



A Spinning Wheel 


grooved pulley or wharve, on the 
spindle (C). The revolutions of 
the large wheel turned the small 
wheel very rapidly, thus com¬ 
municating motion to the spindle 
through the wharve. 


A band or cord (E) connected 
the large wheel with the small 

wheel .(D). Another cord (E) con- , Spinners COuld not keep 

nected the small wheel with the Hargreaves S r ir 

“ spinning up with the weavers, 
jenny, 1764 p r j zes were then offered 

for a better machine than the spin¬ 
ning wheel. At length, James Har¬ 
greaves, a poor workman of Lancashire 
in northern England, devised what he named the “spinning 
jenny,” in compliment to his industrious wife. This machine 
carried a number of spindles turned by cords or belts from 
the same wheel, and was operated by hand. It was a simple 
affair, but it spun at first eight threads, then sixteen, and within 
the inventor’s own lifetime eighty, thus doing the work of many 
spinning wheels. 

The thread spun by the “spinning jenny” was so frail that it 
could be used only for the weft. The spinners needed a machine 
to produce a hard, strong thread for the warp. Richard 
Arkwright met this need by the invention of the “water frame,” 







































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I 1 Chief Industrial Districts L_1 Coalfields 

The letters indicate the nature of the Chief Industries 
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Improvements in Manufacturing 


43i 


so called because it was run by water 
power. The machine contained two 
sets of rollers, one rotat- Arkwright » s 
ing at a higher speed “ water 
than the other. The frame ’ 1769 
cotton was drawn out by the rollers 
to the required fine¬ 
ness and was then 
twisted into thread by 
revolving spindles. 

Samuel Crompton 
soon combined the 
essential Crompton , s 
features “mule,” 
t h e 1779 



o f 

Hargreaves and Ark¬ 
wright machines into 
what became known 
as the “mule,” because of its hybrid origin. 


Arkwright’s Spinning Machine 


As patented in 1769. Above, draft rollers; below, flyer 
spindles; at the left, wheel which propelled the entire 
mechanism. 



Cartwright’s First Power Loom 

The shuttle was propelled mechanically through the long, 
trough-shaped form extending out at the sides. 


When the mechan¬ 
ism was drawn out 
on its wheels one 
way, the strands 
of cotton were 
stretched and twisted 
into threads; when 
it was run back the 
other way, the spun 
threads were wound 
on spindles. The 
“mule” has been 
steadily improved, 
and at the present 
time it may carry 
several thousand 
spindles. 

These three inven¬ 
tions again upset the 







































































































43 2 


Economic Transformation 


balance in the textile industry, for now the spinners could pro¬ 
duce more thread and yarn than the weavers could convert 
. into cloth. The invention which revolutionized 

• power loom, weaving was made by Edmund Cartwright, an 
1785 English clergyman, who had never even seen a 

weaver at work. He constructed a loom with an automatic 
shuttle operated by water power. Improvements in this ma¬ 
chine enable a single operator to produce more cloth than two 
hundred men could weave on the old-fashioned hand loom. 

Both spinners and weav¬ 
ers required for the new 
The cotton machinery an 

gin, 1792 abundant 

supply of raw material. 
They found it in cotton, 
which previously had been 
much less used than either 
wool or flax. Eli Whitney 
of Connecticut, while visit- 
WmxNEY’s Cotton Gin ing a cotton plantation in 

After the original model. Georgia, conceived the idea 

of what he called an engine, 
or gin, for separating the seeds from the raw cotton more rap¬ 
idly than negro slaves could do it by hand. His cotton gin 
stimulated enormously American production of cotton for the 
mills of Great Britain. 

What was to furnish motive power for the new machinery? 
Windmills were too unreliable to be profitably used. Human 
Watt’s steam h an ds had at first operated Hargreaves’s “spinning 
engine, 1769- jenny,” and horses had worked Arkwright’s original 
machine. Both inventors, however, soon turned to 
water power to drive the wheel, and numerous mills were built 
along the streams of northern England. Then came steam 
power. The expansive force of steam, though known in antiq¬ 
uity, was first put to practical service at the close of the seven¬ 
teenth century, when steam pumps were used for ridding mines 
of water. James Watt, a Scotchman of mechanical genius, 



433 


Improvements in Manufacturing 

patented an improved steam pump in 1769 and afterward 
adapted his engine for the operation of spinning machines and 
looms in factories. 

The nineteenth century has been called the age of steaim 
The steamboat, the steam locomotive, and the steam printing 
press are some of the children of Watt’s epochal The age 
invention. Toward the close of the century of steam 
electricity began to compete with steam as a motive force, after 
the invention of that mys¬ 
tic marvel of science, 
the dynamo, and in the 
twentieth century the light 
and portable gas engine 
came into use for automo¬ 
biles, airplanes, and trac¬ 
tors. 

The growing use of ma¬ 
chinery called for an in¬ 
creased pro- The age of 
duction of iron and steel 
iron. Northern and north- 
central England contained 
vast deposits of iron ore, 
but until the latter part 
of the eighteenth century patent for the first practicable sewing machine in 
they had been little worked. l846 - After the model in the u - s - National 
Improved methods of 

smelting with coal and coke, by means of the blast furnace, 
were then adopted. Steel, a product of iron, whose tough¬ 
ness and hardness had been prized for ages, was not produced 
on a large scale until after the middle of the nineteenth century. 
Better methods of production now enable the poorest iron to 
be converted into excellent steel, thus opening up extensive 
fields of low-grade ore in France, Germany, and other countries. 
Steel in every form, from building-girders to watch springs, is 
now the mainstay of modern industry. 

The use of iron and steel and the operation of the new machin- 



Model or Howe’s Sewing Machine 



434 


Economic Transformation 


ery required an abundant, inexpensive fuel. Coal had long been 
burned in small quantities for domestic purposes; applied to the 
The age steam engine and the blast furnace it was to become 
of coal an almost boundless source of power and heat. 

Various improvements in mining cheapened its production, one 
of the most notable being the safety lamp, which protected 
miners against the deadly fire-damp and thus enabled the most 
dangerous mines to be worked with comparative safety. Great 


COAL PIG IRON PETROLEUM 



World Production of Coal, Pig Iron, and Petroleum 


Britain furnished nearly all the coal for manufacturing until the 
middle of the nineteenth century; later, much of the world’s 
supply has come from the mines of France, Germany, and the 
United States. 

Mineral oil, or petroleum, has become an industrial rival of 
coal, since the first oil well was sunk in Pennsylvania in 1859. 
The age There are now more than three hundred products 
of oil of petroleum, the most important being kerosene 

for illumination, gasolene (petrol) for gas engines, and fuel oil for 
oil-burning ships and locomotives. The United States is still the 
chief producer of oil, but we now consume even more than we 
produce. Many new sources of supply will have to be opened 
up throughout the world, if the present enormous consumption 
of petroleum in the United States, Great Britain, and other 
countries is to continue indefinitely. 

126 . Improvements in Transportation 

Civilized man until the nineteenth century continued to 
use the conveyances which had been invented by uncivilized 














Improvements in Transportation 435 




man in prehistoric times. Travel and transport were still on 
horseback, or in litters, wheeled carts, rowboats, Old-fashioned 
and sailboats. Various improvements produced conveyances 
the sedan chair, the stagecoach, and large ocean-going ships, 
without, however, finding 
any substitutes for mus¬ 
cles or wind as the mo¬ 
tive power. 

Most roads in western 
Europe scarcely deserved 

that name; 

. Roads 

they were 

little more than track 
ways, either deep with 
mud or dusty and full of 
ruts. Passengers in stage¬ 
coaches seldom made more 
than fifty miles a day, 
while heavy goods had to 
be moved on pack horses. 

Conditions in Great Britain improved during the latter part of 
the eighteenth century, for the great quantity of goods pro¬ 
duced by the new ma¬ 
chinery increased the 
need for cheap and 
rapid transport. The 
turnpike system, allow¬ 
ing tolls to be charged 
for the use of roads, 
encouraged the invest¬ 
ment of capital by 
private companies in 
these undertakings; 
and it was not long before engineers covered the country with 
well-bottomed, well-drained, and well-surfaced highways. The 
splendid highways which attract the attention of Americans on 
the Continent were mainly built before the era of railroads. 


A Citizen and his Wife 

From a manuscript of the early seventeenth-century; 
in the British Museum, London. 


An Eighteenth-century Stagecoach 

After an old print. 











436 


Economic Transformation 


The expense of transportation by road led people in antiquity 
and the Middle Ages to send their goods by river routes, when- 
c ! ever possible. Canal-building in Europe began 

toward the close of the medieval period, especially 
after the invention of locks for controlling the flow and level 
of the water. The great era of the canal was between 1775 
and 1850, not only in Great Britain and on the Continent, 
but also in the United States. Canals relieved the highways 
of a large part of the growing traffic, but the usefulness of both 



A reconstruction prepared by the Hudson-Fulton Celebration Committee, 1907. 


declined after the introduction of railroads. Ship canals, how¬ 
ever, have begun to be constructed within recent years, as a 
result of the general adoption of steam navigation on the ocean. 

The earliest successful steamboat appears to have been a tug 
built in Scotland for towing canal boats. Robert Fulton, an 
The steam- American engineer who had lived in England and 
boat France, adapted the steamboat to river navigation. 

His side-wheeler, the Clermont, equipped with a Watt engine, 
began in 1807 to make regular trips on the Hudson between New 
York and Albany. Twelve years later an American vessel, 
provided with both sails and a steam engine, crossed the Atlantic 
in twenty-nine days. The first ship to cross without using sails 
or recoaling on the way was the Great Western, in 1838. The 
trip took her fifteen days. 

Various improvements since the middle of the nineteenth 
Steam century added greatly to the efficiency of ocean 

navigation steamers. Iron, and later steel, replaced wood 
in their construction, with a resulting gain in strength and 















JAMES WATT ROBERT FULTON 

After the painting by Sir William Beechey. After the painting by Benjamin West. 












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Improvements in Transportation 


437 


buoyancy. Screw propellers were substituted for clumsy 
paddle wheels, and turbine engines, which apply the energy of 
a jet of steam to secure the rotation of a shaft, were introduced. 
The size of steamers, also, has so increased that the Great Western , 
a boat of 1378 tons and 212 feet in length, would appear a pygmy 
by the side of the fifty-thousand ton “leviathans” which now 
cross the Atlantic in five days. 



The “ Rocket ” 1830 

Built by Stephenson to compete in a trial of locomotive engines for the Liverpool and 
Manchester Railway. The greatest speed it attained in the trial was 29 miles an hour, but 
some years later it ran at the rate of 53 miles an hour. The total weight of the engine and 
tender was only about 7^ tons. 


Wooden or iron rails had long been used in mines and quarries 
to enable horses to draw heavy loads with ease. George Steph¬ 
enson, who profited by the experiments of other The steam 
inventors, produced in 1814 a successful locomotive tocomotive 
for hauling coal from the mine to tide-water. He improved his 
model and eleven years later secured its adoption on the Stockton 
and Darlington Railway, the first line over which passengers and 
freight were carried by steam power. Stephenson also built 
the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, on which his famous 
engine, the Rocket, made its maiden trip. 

Many technical improvements — the increased size of loco¬ 
motives and cars, air brakes, and the use of steel rails in place 



















43 8 


Economic Transformation 


transporta¬ 

tion 


of iron rails which supported only light loads and wore out 
rapidly — have extended the usefulness of the railroad far be- 
Raiiroad yond the dreams of its earlier promoters. The 
greatest development of railroad transportation 
came in the latter part of the nineteenth century, 
with the construction of great “trunk” lines and branches 
(“feeders”) radiating into the remotest districts. Western 
Europe and the United States are now covered with a network 
of railroads, and these are being extended rapidly to all civil¬ 
ized and even semicivilized lands. 



A Precursor of the Automobile 

An old picture of F. Hill’s steam carriage running between London and Birmingham, 
1839-1843. 


Modern electric traction dates from the early ’eighties of the 
last century, when the overhead trolley began to supplant 
Electric horse cars and cable cars in cities. The develop- 

tractxon ment of the electric locomotive promises to bring 

about a partial substitution of electricity for steam on railroads 
through tunnels and over heavy grades. 

The earliest application of steam power to transportation 
was neither the railway nor the steam boat but the road engine. 
The As far back as 1801 an English inventor constructed 

automobile a s t e am carriage for passengers. Repeated efforts 
were made during the next forty years to popularize the new 








Improvements in Transportation 


439 


The airplane 


mode of travel in England, but bad roads and an unsympathetic 
public discouraged inventors. The automobile had to wait for 
the gas or “internal combustion” engine (as patented in the 
last decade of the nineteenth century) to become a commercial 
success. The United States far surpasses any other country in 
the wide use of the automobile. 

The history of the airplane illustrates the truth that great 
inventions do not spring fully developed from the brain of one 
man, but, on the contrary, represent the long and 
patient experimentation of many men. An Ameri¬ 
can scientist, S. P. Langley, who himself owed much to the work 
of others, pro¬ 
duced in 1903 
a heavier- 
than-air ma¬ 
chine which 
was driven by 
steam. The 
accidents at¬ 
tending its The Wright Biplane 

first trials As used by Orville Wright in the United States and Wilbur Wright 
j •, , in France for their first successful flights. 

caused it to 

be abandoned. Five years later the Wright Brothers, using 
an airplane fitted with a gas engine, first flew in public. The 
World War gave a great impetus to the development of the 
airplane. Its powers were strikingly revealed by two British 
aviators, Alcock and Brown, who in June, 1919, made a non¬ 
stop flight across the Atlantic from Newfoundland to Ireland, 
covering the distance in less than sixteen hours. Another 
remarkable achievement was the non-stop flight from New 
York to Paris made in May, 1927, by the American aviator, 
Charles A. Lindbergh, who flew alone in a machine of his own 
design. The airplane is now employed for carrying mail and, 
to some extent, for the transport of passengers. Its commer¬ 
cial use on a large scale may be looked for in the near future. 

Two Frenchmen, the Montgolfier Brothers, invented the 
balloon in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Experi- 






440 


Economic Transformation 


The airship 


ments in balloon navigation continued throughout the nineteenth 
century, and finally Count Zeppelin, an officer in the German 
army, produced an airship which consisted, not 
of one balloon, but of a row of bags inclosed in an 
enormous shell of aluminium trellis work. It carried two cars, 
each provided with a gas motor. The trial of this Zeppelin in 
1900 showed how nearly the problem of a dirigible balloon had 
been solved. Other successful airships were soon constructed in 
France and England. The World War stimulated their develop¬ 
ment, as was the case with the airplane. To the British dirigible, 

the R-34, belongs the 
renown of having been 
the first to cross the 
Atlantic (July 2-6, 
1919). The R-34 car¬ 
ried a crew and passen¬ 
gers from Scotland to 
Long Island, covering 
the distance of 3200 
miles in a trifle more 
than 108 hours. The 
took only 



A “ Boneshaker ” 

An early form of the bicycle, as patented in the United return trip 
States in 1866. The machine had a wooden frame sup- , . 

ported on two wooden wheels. These at first had iron tnree aayS. 
tires, but rubber ones were later substituted for them. As far back 


as the 

Revolutionary War, an American inventor constructed a tiny 
The submarine and tried, without success, to sink a 

submarine British warship. Robert Fulton, encouraged by 
Napoleon, made several submarines. He descended in one of 
them to a depth of twenty-five feet, remained below for four 
hours, and succeeded in blowing up a small vessel with a tor¬ 
pedo. Under-water boats, propelled by steam power, were 
used by the Confederates in the Civil War. From about 
this time inventors in several countries worked on the problem 
of the submarine. One of the most successful was an Irish - 
American, J. P. Holland, who sold the boat named after him to 
the United States in 1898. The improvement of the submarine 
from this time is a familiar story. Thus, in the course of about 



Improved Communication 


441 


H0 


a century, man has completed the conquest of land and air 
and sea. 

127. Improved Communication 

Scientists of the eighteenth century often discussed the 
idea of using electricity to communicate at a distance, 
but a 

The telegraph 

prac¬ 
ticable apparatus 
for converting the 
electric current 
into intelligible 
signs did not ap¬ 
pear until the 
’thirties of the 
nineteenth cen¬ 
tury. Samuel F. 

B. Morse, an Amer¬ 
ican, deserves per¬ 
haps the greatest 
credit for the in¬ 
vention. He also 



Morse’s First Telegraph Instrument, 1837 
In the U. S. National Museum, Washington. 


devised the “Morse alphabet.” The telegraph found an immedi¬ 
ate use in running railroads and in the transmission of govern¬ 
ment messages. Later, it 
made its way into the busi¬ 
ness world. 

Hardly any one at first be¬ 
lieved that a telegraph line 
Could be carried Submarine 
across the ocean. cables 
Experiments soon showed, 
however, that wire cords, 



The Original Atlantic Cable 


The illustration shows seven copper wires (4) , , , r 

forming a conductor; a wrapping of thread (3) protected by wrappers 01 
soaked in pitch; several layers of gutta percha (2) ; g U £ta percha, WOuld conduct 
and the covering of twisted wires (1). . , . , , 

the electric current under 
water. The first cable was laid from Dover to Calais. A group 
of American promoters, including Cyrus W. Field, then took up 























442 


Economic Transformation 


the project of an Atlantic cable which should “moor the New 
World alongside the Old.” Discouraging failures marked the 

enterprise. The first cables were 
broken by the ocean, and the line 
which was finally laid soon be¬ 
came useless, owing to the failure 
of its electrical insulation. After 
the Civil War Field renewed his 
efforts, which were crowned with 
success in 1866. There are now 
several thousand submarine tele¬ 
graph lines in operation, bridg¬ 
ing electrically all the oceans. 
In 1924 a message was flashed 
around the world in eighty sec¬ 
onds. 

Experimentation with rude 
forms of the telephone began in 
the same decade which produced 
the telegraph. Little progress took place until 1875, when Alex- 
The tele- ander Graham Bell, a native of Edinburgh but 

phone later a resident of Boston, patented his first 

instrument. Many improvements have since 
been made in it by Bell himself, Edison, and 
other inventors. Long-distance messages are 
now transmitted, not only on land, but also by 
means of special cables under the sea. 

The invention of wireless telegraphy by the 
Italian, Marconi, may be said to date from First Adhesive 
The 1899, when wireless messages were Penny Post- 

“ wireless ” se nt between France and England AGE Stamp 
across the Channel. A trans-Atlantic service T t he d ^’, a c . on : 

ventionalized head of 

by “wireless” began eight years later, and since Queen Victoria, was 
then the range of Marconi’s apparatus has been j^^g^ 86 
greatly extended. The still more recent intro¬ 
duction of wireless or radio telephony promises to work another 
revolution in long-distance communication. 




Thomas A. Edison 

A bronze relief by Julio Kilenyi (1924). 







Improved Communication 


443 


A regular postal service under government management 
existed in Europe as early as the seventeenth century, but it was 
slow, expensive, and little used. Stamps were The postal 
unknown, prepayment of postage was considered service 
an insult, and rates increased according to distance. The 
modern postal service began in Great Britain in 1840, with the 
adoption of a uniform 
charge irrespective of 
distance (penny post¬ 
age) , prepayment, and 
the use of stamps. 

These reforms soon 
spread to other coun¬ 
tries and everywhere 
resulted in greatly 
increased use of the 
mails. The Universal 
Postal Union, which 
has a central office 
at Bern, Switzerland, 
makes arrangements 
for common rates of 
foreign postage and 
for cooperation in 
carrying the mails 
from country to coun¬ 
try. 

Weekly and daily newspapers also began to appear in the 
seventeenth century, but they were luxuries reserved for sub¬ 
scribers of the middle and upper classes. The 
cheap newspaper for the masses is a product of the 
nineteenth century. The London Times installed the first steam 
printing press in 1814. A paper-making machine, which pro¬ 
duced wide sheets of unlimited length, came into use soon after. 
To these inventions must be added the linotype machine, which 
in newspaper offices, where rapid composition is necessary, has 
largely superseded hand-work in setting type. 



The Sholes (Remington) Typewriter (1873) 

Various typewriting machines were invented during the 
nineteenth century, but it was not until the ’seventies that 
they began to come into general use. 


Newspapers 





444 


Economic Transformation 


The new 
communi¬ 
cation 


Many inventions in communication — the instantaneous 
camera, the cinematograph or motion picture, the phonograph, 
the automatic piano, the radio — are so new that 
we have scarcely as yet begun to realize their 
possibilities. Properly directed, they will furnish 
the common people in civilized countries with an education in 
art, music, and the drama which in former days could be secured 
only by persons of wealth and leisure. Their great service 
promises to be that of democratizing culture, as cheap news¬ 
papers and books have democratized knowledge. 


128. Commerce 


A tremendous expansion of commerce followed the improve¬ 
ments in manufacturing, transportation, and communication. 
Commercial The use of machinery in factories led to the produc- 
expansion tion of commodities in enormous quantities for 
world-wide consumption. Macadamized roads, inland and ship 
canals, ocean steamships, and railroads reduced freight rates 
to a mere fraction of those once charged, while the telegraph, 
telephone, cheap postage, and newspapers made possible the 
rapid spread of information relating to crops and markets. It is 
estimated that the commerce of the world (including even 
backward countries) increased over twelve hundred per cent in 
the nineteenth century. During the first three decades of the 
.twentieth century commercial expansion has been on a still more 
colossal scale. 

The organization of commerce shows wonderful changes 
since the Middle Ages. There is now so steady a flow of com¬ 
modities from producers through wholesalers and 
retailers to consumers that the old system of 
weekly markets and annual fairs is all but obsolete. Distinc¬ 
tively modern are produce exchanges for trade in the great 
staples (wheat, cotton, wool, sugar, etc.) and stock exchanges 
for buying and selling the stocks and bonds of corporations. 

The modern system of insurance is an economic benefit, in 
view of the risks involved in most commercial undertakings. 


Exchanges 


Commerce 


445 


For a small payment the farmer insures his growing crop against 
hail or windstorm; the merchant, his stock against fire; the 
shipowner, his vessel against loss at sea. Marine insurance 
insurance arose in medieval Italy, but for centuries companies 
it has centered in London. The first fire insurance policies were 
written in London after a great fire in the reign of Charles II. 
Other forms of business insurance originated much more recently. 
The present tendency seems to be to insure against every possible 
misfortune which can be foreseen. 

A commercial bank, as distinguished from a savings bank or 
a trust company, may be defined as an institution which deals 
in money and credit. It attracts the deposits of Bankg 
many persons, thus gaining control of great sums 
available for loans to manufacturers and merchants. Banks do 
not increase the amount of capital (factory buildings, machinery, 
raw materials, etc.) in a community, but they help to put it at 
the disposal of active business men; in other words, banks make 
capital fluid . Furthermore, bank checks, drafts, and foreign 
bills of exchange provide a cheap and elastic substitute for 
money. It is possible through their use to discharge a large 
volume of indebtedness without the transfer of cash. 

The earliest banks were the private establishments of moneyed 
men in Italian cities. Venice and Genoa founded public or state 
banks, and similar institutions arose in many Deve i op - 
European capitals. All the great European banks, ment of 
as well as the national banks of the United States, bankillg 
have the privilege of issuing redeemable notes which circulate 
in place of gold. 

In spite of the extensive use of checks and bank notes, the 
growth of commerce continues to absorb immense quantities of 
gold, the money metal. The supply has kept The gold 
pace with the demand. The mines of California, su ppU 
Australia, South Africa, Alaska, and other countries produced 
in the second half of the nineteenth century nine times as much 
gold as had been produced between 1800 and 1850. 

The supply of silver increased during the nineteenth century 
far in excess of the demand. Its declining value led the principal 


446 


Economic Transformation 


commercial states to diminish or suspend silver coinage. Great 
Britain first abandoned the double or bimetallic standard and 
The gold adopted the single gold standard. Her example 

standard has b een followed by the Continental nations, the 

British colonies, Japan, the South American republics, and the 
United States. China and Mexico are the only important 
countries which remain on a silver basis. 

The almost universal use of gold as the standard of value 
results in a world market for money. Capitalists and bankers 
international in progressive countries are thus enabled to supply 
finance funds for investment in less progressive countries. 

Statisticians estimate that up to 1914 not less than twenty billion 
dollars had been invested abroad by Great Britain, about half 
of it in her colonies and about half in foreign lands. French 
investments in Russia and other countries totaled about ten 
billion dollars, while those of Germany abroad also reached 
an impressively high figure. All through the nineteenth 
century the United States was a debtor nation, because of the 
immense sums borrowed for the development of American 
railroads, mines, farms, and factories. This situation changed 
with startling suddenness during the World War, when the 
Allied nations purchased in the United States enormous 
amounts of food, raw materials, and munitions. Not only has 
the United States wiped off its indebtedness to Europe, but it 
has now made Europe heavily its debtor. 

Commercial progress has been frequently interrupted by 
periods of depression called crises. Arising in one country, 
Crises perhaps as a result of bad banking, over-issue of 

paper money, speculation, unwise investments, or 
failure of crops, they tend to spread widely until all civilized 
countries are involved. What happens during a crisis is familiar 
to every one. Capitalists refuse to invest in new railroads, 
factories, and other undertakings; bankers will not lend money; 
merchants, unable to borrow, go into bankruptcy; and manu¬ 
facturers, receiving fewer orders, either reduce their output or 
shut down their plants. Then follows a period of “hard times,” 
with low prices, low wages, much unemployment, and widespread 










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HAWAII 


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f*Q 

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>7 / «• Monrovi^V^ 


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30 


60 


70 




SAMOA IS. 


o c j; ; f 


COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT 
OF THE WORLD 


[ Regions commercially developed 
| Regions undeveloped commercially 


I Regions capable of commercial development 
I during the summer 


| Barren and desert regions 
| Seas navigable throughout the year 
I Seas navigable during the summer 


Principal Railroads . 

Principal Steamship routes. | 
with distances in nautical miles J 

Principal Canals. 

Principal ocean cables 


Scale along the equator in Statute Miles 

O 1000 2000 3000 4000 6000 


150 



o» 


i* a 

N T A ) 

----- 


120 


Longitude 90° West from 60° Greenwich 30° 

—- - — I 














































































































KSyd'ney . 

TAucklandiV- 


Melbourne^r'Cl' 3 ''- s /oJ 

WeJlj.ngton^l/ 

--^Hobart new nd 


C E A N 

/~V r 

Wilkes Land 


TnE MATTHEWS-N O RTHRUP WORKS , 



— X 

/v ’S' - '-'v-''- 


V- 

BUFFALO, N.Y. 



I I * IVI " 1 _j ~ .---—-- ^ * Q 

60 3 Longitude 90° East from 120° Greenwich 150 













































































































































1 

. 













































' 




. 












■ 




















‘ 





















■ 































Commerce 


447 


destitution. The wave of prosperity sets in again, eventually, 
and times once more become “good.” Crises have usually 
occurred at intervals of ten or eleven years, but recently with 
lessening severity. They may cease altogether as modern com¬ 
merce becomes still more efficient. 

Many obstacles impeding the exchange of goods in the Middle 
Ages disappeared in modern times. State police finally sup¬ 
pressed highway robbery. Piracy, once so common, Commercial 
became obsolete in the era of modern steam naviga- freedom 
tion. The burdensome tolls imposed by feudal lords on trans¬ 
portation and travel were no longer exacted, now that feudalism 
itself had died out. A movement also began to reduce the high 
duties levied by every European nation on imports and exports. 

Great Britain went still further in the nineteenth century and 
adopted free trade. Having no reason to fear the competition 
of foreign manufacturers, it was to her advantage Free trade 
to lower or abolish the duties on imports, especially in Great 
those on raw materials. She now imposes no Bntam 
restrictions whatever on exports and levies import duties only on 
a few articles, including coffee, tea, tobacco, alcoholic liquors, 
and sugar. Even these are for revenue, not for protection. 

Another feature of the free-trade movement in Great Britain 
was the agitation against the Corn 1 Laws. These laws restricted 
or entirely prohibited the importation of wheat Repeal of 
or other grains, in the interest of British farmers the Com 
and landlords. Manufacturers, on the other hand, Laws * 1846 
objected to legislation which made food dear for the working 
classes. Since the repeal of the laws Great Britain has secured 
the bulk of her food abroad, from the fertile wheat areas of the 
United States and the British colonies, and has paid for it with 
the products of her mines and factories. 

The Navigation Acts (§ 122), after having been in operation 
for nearly two centuries, were also repealed. Repeal of the 
Foreign ships were henceforth allowed to compete Navigation 
with those of Great Britain in the carrying trade. Acts ’ 1849 

1 “Corn” to an Englishman means wheat; to a Scotsman or an Irishman, oats; 
and to an American, maize, or Indian corn. 


448 


Economic Transformation 


Competition has resulted in lower freight rates and consequently 
in cheaper food for the British people. 

The free-trade movement spread to the Continent, where it 
led at first to a general lowering of tariff walls. In the last 
Protection on quarter of the nineteenth century, however, 
the Continent France, Germany, and other countries returned 
to the policy of protection. They sought in this way to build 
up their own “ infant industries ” and even to compete with 
Great Britain in the industrial markets of the world. 

The first American tariff was framed by the first Congress 
under the Constitution. It levied a few small protective duties. 
Protection The United States afterward adopted protection 
in the United on a more extensive scale, as a means of keeping 
alive the industries which had sprung up in the 
country when the second war with Great Britain stopped all 
imports of British manufactures. Later tariffs have generally 
raised duties, except for a few decades before the Civil War. In 
following a protective policy, the United States thus ranges 
itself with the principal Continental nations. 


Agriculture 
in the seven 
teenth and 
eighteenth 
centuries 


129. Agriculture and Land Tenure 

The agricultural system of the Middle Ages (§ 84), with its 
wasteful “open fields” and fallow lands, its backward methods, 
and its scanty yield, began to be revolutionized in 
modern times. The Dutch were the first scientific 
farmers, and from them English farmers learned 
many secrets of tillage. Deeper plowing, more 
thorough pulverization of the ground, more diligent 
manuring, the shifting or rotation of crops from field to field, so 
that the soil would not have to lie fallow every third year, and 
the introduction of new crops, including turnips, clover, and 
rye, were some of the improvements which doubled the yield of 
agricultural land. The weight of cattle and sheep was also much 
increased through careful selection in breeding. It is significant 
of the revived interest in agriculture that George III contributed 
articles to a farm journal and that Washington, in his quiet 


Agriculture and Land Tenure 449 

retreat at Mount Vernon, invented a plow and a rotary seed 
drill. 

The improvements in agriculture have now extended to every 
progressive country. Machinery replaces the ancient scythe, 
sickle, flail, and other implements. One machine, . 

f . . . . Agriculture in 

of American invention, not only reaps the gram, the nineteenth 

but threshes it, winnows it, and delivers it into and twentieth 
• 1 ...... centuries 

sacks at a single operation. The introduction of 

cheap artificial fertilizers makes profitable the cultivation of 
poor lands formerly allowed to lie idle. The advance of engineer¬ 
ing science leads to the reclamation of marshes and arid wastes. 



McCormick Reaper 


The reaper with a vibrating cutter, as first patented by Cyrus H. McCormick in 1834. The 
inventor afterward established large works in Chicago for manufacturing the reaper and 
other agricultural machines. 

Finally, steam navigation allows a country to draw supplies of 

wheat, meat, and other foodstuffs from the most distant regions, 

with the result that the specter of famine, so common in the 

Middle Ages, has well-nigh disappeared from the modern world. 

The “open-field” system of cultivation, whereby the same 

person tilled many small strips in different parts of the manor, 

was so wasteful of time and labor that medieval 
, . . . . . Inclosures 

farmers began to exchange their scattered strips 

for compact holdings which could be inclosed with hedges or 
fences and cultivated independently. This inclosure movement 
continued in western Europe all through the modern period, 
until at length the old “open fields” had been practically aban¬ 
doned in favor of separate farms and individual tillage. 






45° 


Economic Transformation 


Inclosures meant better farming everywhere, but in Great 
Britain they also helped to create the large estates so character- 
British istic of that country. The lord of the manor, not 

landlordism satisfied with inclosing his demesne lands, often 
managed to inclose those of the peasants as well, and even the 
meadows and forests, which had been formerly used by them 

in common. At the pres¬ 
ent time ten thousand per¬ 
sons own two-thirds of all 
England and Wales; seven¬ 
teen thousand persons own 
nine-tenths of Scotland. 
The rural population of 
Great Britain consists of 
a few landlords, numerous 
tenant farmers who rent 
their farms from the lords, 
and a still larger number 
of laborers who work for 
daily wages and have no 
interest in the soil they 
till. 

British economists and 
statesmen have long felt 
that, as a mere matter 
of national safety, Great 
Britain ought to raise more of her own food supply. If the 
country were effectively blockaded in time of war, 
the starvation of its industrial population would 
soon result. As a result of the World War, mil¬ 
lions of acres formerly withdrawn from cultivation were put un¬ 
der the plow. Efforts have also begun to break up the large 
estates by such heavy taxes that it will be no longer profitable 
to hold them. 

In France a considerable part of the agricultural land be¬ 
longed to the peasants even before the Revolution. Their 
possessions increased in the revolutionary era, as the result of 



In closures in England in the 
Eighteenth Century 

Horizontal shading — Partially closed fields in 1700. 
Vertical shading — Mainly open fields in 1700. 


Agrarian 
reform in 
Great Britain 
























Agriculture and Land Tenure 


45* 

legislation confiscating the estates of the Crown, the Church, 
and the nobles. France to-day is emphatically a French 
country of small but prosperous and contented peasant pro¬ 
farmers. In no European state would an agitation P netorshl P s 
for the abolition of private ownership of land have fewer chances 
of success. 

The agrarian reforms of the French Revolution spread to 
Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, western Germany, and northern 
Italy, where peasant proprietorships are common. Land tenure 
They are rare in much of Spain and in southern i n other 
Italy and Sicily. Central and eastern Europe re- c o ntinental 
mained under the medieval manorial system through¬ 
out the nineteenth century. The land was owned by a few noble 
families and was worked by peasants, either as tenants or day 
laborers. Outside of Russia proper, there were five of these 
landed aristocracies in 1914: in eastern Germany, where serf¬ 
dom disappeared only in the Napoleonic era; in Austria- 
Hungary, where it disappeared still later; in the Baltic provinces 
controlled by nobles of German origin; in Poland and Lithuania; 
and in Rumania. The revolutionary movements since 1914 
promise to destroy the land monopoly of the aristocrats in all 
these countries. There will arise, instead, a new democratic 
society of peasant proprietors. This triumph of the small land 
owner in central and eastern Europe must be considered one of 
the most important economic results of the World War. 

After the abolition of Russian serfdom in the nineteenth 
century the nobles were required to sell a portion Land tenure 
of their estates to the peasants, about half of the m Russia 
agricultural area of European Russia thus changing hands. 
Except in certain districts where individual ownership prevailed, 
the farming land was intrusted to the entire village imir) for 
redistribution at intervals among the inhabitants. All that 
the peasant really possessed in his own right was a house and 
a garden plot. The Russian Revolution of 1917 broke up the 
mir system and also enabled the peasants to take over the 
estates of the nobles. The Bolshevik! now in power in Russia 
have permitted this to be done, in order to win the support of 


45 2 


Economic Transformation 


the peasantry. If Russia adopts complete individual owner¬ 
ship of land, it will mark a significant step in the progress of 
that country, where about nine-tenths of the population live 
mainly or wholly by agriculture. 

130. The Labor Movement 

The great inventions, besides hastening the transition from 
hand-labor to machine-labor, also did much to separate labor 
Guild and capital. No such separation was possible 

system in th e Middle Ages (§ 87). A master who be¬ 

longed to a craft guild purchased his raw materials at the city 
market or at a fair, manufactured them in his own house, 
assisted by the members of his family and usually by a few 
journeymen and apprentices, and himself sold the finished 
article to the person who had ordered it. This guild system, as 
it is called, has not entirely disappeared. One may still have 
a pair of shoes made by a “custom” shoemaker or a suit of 
clothes made by a “custom” tailor. 

The growing exclusiveness of the craft guilds, toward the 
close of the medieval period (§ 105), prevented many apprentices 
Domestic and journeymen from ever becoming masters, 

system Consequently, workers often left the cities and 

settled in the country or in villages where there were no guild 
restrictions. The movement gave rise to the domestic system, 
as found, for example, in the British cotton industry. A middle¬ 
man with some capital would purchase a supply of raw cotton 
and distribute it to the spinners and weavers to convert into 
cloth on their own spinning wheels and hand looms. They 
worked at home and usually eked out their wages by cultivating 
a small garden plot. Something akin to the domestic system 
still survives in the sweatshops of modern cities where clothing 
is made on “commission.” 

It is clear that under the domestic system the middleman 
Factory who provided the raw materials, took all the risks 

system and reC eived all the profits. The workers, on the 

other hand, had to accept such wages and labor upon such con- 


The Labor Movement 


453 


ditions as he was willing to offer. The separation of labor and 
capital, which thus began under the domestic system, became 
complete under the factory system. Arkwright’s, Crompton’s, 
and Cartwright’s machines were too expensive for a single 
family to own; too large and heavy for use in private houses; 
and they needed water power or steam power to operate them. 
The consequence was that the domestic laborer abandoned his 
household industry and went with hundreds of others to work 
in a mill or factory. The capitalist employer now not only 
provided the raw materials and disposed of the finished product, 
but he also owned the machinery and the workshop. The 
word “manufacturer” 1 no longer applied to the hand-worker, 
but to the person who employed others to work for him. 

The new conditions of industry fostered the growth of trade 
unions, which are combinations of wage earners to maintain or 
improve the conditions under which they labor. Ri se 0 f trade 
These associations began to appear in Great Britain unions 
during the eighteenth century, especially after the domestic 
system gave way to the factory system. The workers in any 
one establishment or occupation, being now thrown more 
closely together, came to realize their common interests and to 
appreciate the need for organization. 

The unions immediately encountered opposition. The Com¬ 
mon Law treated them as conspiracies in restraint of trade and 
hence as illegal. Moreover, the employers used Trade unions 
their influence in Parliament to secure the passage prohibited 
of a long series of Acts designed to prevent what were styled 
“unlawful combinations of workmen.” The last of these Acts, 
passed in 1800, even provided the penalty of imprisonment at 
hard labor for persons who combined with others to raise wages, 
shorten hours, or in any way control the conditions of industry. 

Agitation by trade-union leaders induced Parliament in 
1825 to repeal all the Combination Acts and to Trade unions 
replace them by a new and more liberal statute. le s ali zed 
Laborers might now lawfully meet together for the purpose 

1 Latin manu, facere, to make by hand. Manufacture by machinery has been 
well-named machinofacture. 


454 


Economic Transformation 


unionism 

to-day 


of agreeing on the rate of wages or the number of hours which 
they would work, as long as the agreement concerned only 
those who were present at the meeting. This qualification was 
removed a number of years later. Finally, the Trade Union 
Act of 1875 declared that nothing done by a group of laborers 
should be considered illegal unless it was also illegal when done 
by a single person. This measure gave the working classes the 
full right of combination for which they had long been striv¬ 
ing. It has been called the Magna Carta of trade unionism. 

The trade unions of Great Britain have made much progress 
within recent years. In 1914 they enrolled nearly four million 
British trade members, including factory operatives, railway 
workers, coal miners, and agricultural laborers. 
They send their representatives to Parliament and 
exercise great influence on labor legislation. Their officers also 
frequently serve as factory inspectors. Many unions enjoy 
a considerable income, which goes to support members who are 
temporarily out of work, sick, disabled, or infirm. 

Continental trade unions are modeled upon the British organi¬ 
zations, but do not equal them in numbers, wealth, or influence. 
Trade union- Many have a political character, being closely 
ism on the connected with socialist parties. In general, Con¬ 
tinental workingmen rely for improvement in their 
condition upon State action rather than upon collective bargain¬ 
ing with their employers. 

The organization of American trade unions began early in 
the nineteenth century, but their great and rapid growth has 
Trade union- ta ken place since the Civil War. Probably about 
ism in the fifteen per cent of the male wage-earners belong 
United States them. While this may seem a small proportion, 
it must be remembered that their membership consists chiefly 
of skilled laborers. Most of the trade unions are affiliated with 
the American Federation of Labor, which was founded in 1886. 

The cooperative movement also started in Great Britain. 
Cooperative There are in that country a large number of socie- 
societies ties, open to workingmen on the payment of a 
small fee, and selling goods to members at prices considerably 


Government Regulation of Industry 455 


lower than those charged by private concerns. Members share 
in the profits in accordance with the amount of their purchases. 
The success of cooperation in retailing has brought about its 
extension to wholesaling and even to manufacturing and bank¬ 
ing. Similar societies are numerous on the Continent. They 
have made little headway in the United States, with such 
conspicuous exceptions as mutual life insurance companies and 
building and loan associations. 

131. Government Regulation of Industry 

Improvement in the lot of the working classes has taken place 
not only through the activities of trade unions, cooperative 
societies, and other voluntary associations, but Evilsof 
also by legislation. The need for government the factory 
regulation of industry very soon became apparent. system 
The crowded factories were unsanitary. Hours of labor were 
too long. Wages were on the starvation level. Furthermore, 
the use of machinery encouraged the employment of women 
and children, for whose labor there had been previously little 
demand outside the home. Their excessive toil amid unhealthy 
surroundings often developed disease and deformity or brought 
premature death. Much excuse existed for the passionate 
words of one reformer that the slave trade was “mercy com¬ 
pared to the factory system.” 

These evils were naturally most prominent in Great Britain, 
where the factory system started. Little effort was made at first 
to remedy them. The working classes exercised The “ let- 
no political influence; indeed, by the Combination alone ” P° licy 
Acts they had been prohibited from forming trade unions for 
their protection. Statesmen, instead of meeting the situation 
by remedial legislation, adopted a “let-alone” policy. The 
government, they declared, should keep its hands oh industry. 
The greatest good to the greatest number could only be secured 
when “economic laws” of supply and demand were allowed to 
determine the wages and conditions of employment, just as they 
determined the prices, quantity, and quality of commodities. 


45 6 


Economic Transformation 


“Let alone” naturally became the watchword of selfish 
employers, to whose avarice and cruelty it gave full rein. Yet 
Early labor there were also humane employers who felt that 
legislation the State ought to protect those who could not 
protect themselves. After some agitation the first British 
Factory Act was passed in 1802. This measure, which applied 

only to cotton factories, prohib¬ 
ited the binding-out for labor of 
pauper children under nine years 
of age, restricted their working 
hours to twelve a day, and for¬ 
bade night work. Little more 
was done for thirty-one years. 
During this time several philan¬ 
thropists, among whom Lord 
Ashley, afterward earl of Shaftes¬ 
bury, had the greatest influence, 
took up the cause of the op¬ 
pressed workers and on the floor 
of Parliament, on the platform, 
in the pulpit, and in the news¬ 
papers waged a campaign to 
arouse the public to the need for 
additional legislation. The result 
was the passage in 1833 °f an Act which applied to all tex¬ 
tile factories and provided for their regular inspection by 
public officials. A few years later Ashley, whose life was 
devoted to philanthropy and social reform, carried through 
Parliament an Act forbidding the employment of women and 
children in mines. Parliament afterward passed the Ten-Hour 
Act, which limited the labor of women and children in textile 
factories to ten hours a day. This measure became a law only 
after the fiercest opposition on the part of manufacturers, but 
it proved so beneficial that henceforth the desirability of factory 
legislation was generally admitted. 

Government regulation of industry now began to become a 
reality. Mines, bakeries, laundries, docks, retail and wholesale 



The Earl or Shaftesbury 

After a bust by Sir J. E. Boehm, in the 
National Portrait Gallery, London. 


Government Regulation of Industry 


457 


shops, and many other establishments were gradually brought 
under control. At the present time the State restricts the em¬ 
ployment of children so that they may not be de- British labor 
prived of an education. It limits the hours of legislation 
labor, not only of children and women in most t0_day 
industries, but also of men in mines and factories. It requires 
employers to install safety appliances in their plants and to 
take all other precautions necessary for the preservation of 
the lives, limbs, and health of their employees. The government 
supports employment bureaus or labor exchanges, in order that 
the idle may find work. A National Insurance Act provides for 
the compulsory insurance of nearly all employees against sick¬ 
ness and loss of employment. Great Britain also grants to every 
insured person who has reached sixty-five years of age the right 
to claim an old-age pension of ten shillings a week. The same 
amount will be paid to the wife of a man eligible to a pension. 
In such cases the addition of a pound a week to the family 
income usually means relief from distressing poverty and de¬ 
pendence on charity. 

The labor legislation of France, Belgium, Holland, Austria, 
and the Scandinavian states compares favorably with that of 
Great Britain. Nowhere on the Continent has it L abor i eg i s _ 
gone farther than in Germany. That country has lation on the 
laws establishing a maximum number of working Contment 
hours, limiting child and female labor, and providing a system 
of workingmen’s insurance against accidents, sickness, in¬ 
capacity, and old age. 

The need for labor legislation has been felt less acutely in 
the United States than in Europe. One reason for this is the 
fact that American workingmen enjoy higher A merican 
wages and better conditions of employment than labor 
workingmen abroad. Another reason is found in le s islatlon 
the comparatively late development of the factory system in 
the United States. Labor laws, when passed, are often de¬ 
clared unconstitutional by state and federal courts, as interfer¬ 
ing with freedom of contract or as being class legislation. In 
spite of this obstacle, the movement for the legal protection of 


45 8 


Economic Transformation 


labor has made much progress within recent years, especially 
in New England and the states of the Middle West. 

The youthful commonwealths of Australia and New Zealand, 
unhampered by tradition, are trying a number of interesting 
Australasian experiments in government regulation of industry, 
labor legisla- Both countries give compensation to workingmen 
injured by accidents and old-age pensions to poor 
people. New Zealand, in addition, provides fire, life, and ac¬ 
cident insurance, conducts postal savings banks, rents model 
homes to workingmen, and makes arbitration of labor disputes 
compulsory, in order to do away with strikes. 


132. Public Ownership 


of State 
enterprise 


The modern State, in all civilized countries, does many 
things which private individuals themselves did during the 
Extension Middle Ages. The State maintains an army and 
navy, administers justice, provides a police system, 
and furnishes public education. No one now ques¬ 
tions either the need or the desirability of such activities. As 
we have just learned, the State also subjects private industry 
to ever-increasing regulation for the benefit of the less fortu¬ 
nate members of society. Furthermore, it engages in a variety 
of industrial undertakings. 

Governments sometimes monopolize different branches of 
business in order to raise revenue. A notable instance is the 
Examples monopoly of' the sale of tobacco and matches in 
France. The post office is always in government 
hands, not so much for revenue as to secure cheap 
communication between different parts of the country. In 
Great Britain and on the Continent telegraphs and telephones 
are managed by the government in connection with the post 
office, and the government parcel post does all the business 
which in the United States is partly absorbed by private express 
companies. Coinage is everywhere a public function, as well as 
much of the banking in European countries. In the United 
States banks are private institutions under state or national 


of State 
enterprise 


Public Ownership 


459 


regulation. Germany and Russia have public forests; Prussia 
has public mines; and France has a number of canals belong¬ 
ing to the government. 

On the Continent (Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Germany 
Austria, Russia) railroads are mostly State-owned and State- 
managed. Nearly all the French lines are pri¬ 
vately owned, but they will go back to the govern¬ 
ment upon the expiration of their franchises. Great Britain 
and the United States took over their railroads for military 
purposes during the World War, but these have now been re¬ 
turned to private ownership and operation. In Australia the 
government built the principal railroads and owns and operates 
all of them. 

Both British and Continental cities generally own and 
operate such public utilities as street railways, gas and elec¬ 
tric lighting plants, and waterworks. Markets, Municipal 
slaughter houses, baths, pawn shops, docks, and enterprise 
harbor improvements are likewise often municipal monopolies. 
In the United States municipal ownership has been common in 
the case of waterworks, somewhat less common in the case of 
electric lighting plants, rare in that of gas plants, and scarcely 
known in that of street railways. Since free competition can¬ 
not prevail in these industries, the only choice is between 
municipal ownership or private ownership subject to municipal 
regulation of charges and service. 

It must now be obvious that the “let-alone” policy finds 
few adherents at the present time. Defense against external 
aggression, preservation of internal order, and the Reaction 
maintenance of a few public institutions do not against 
exhaust the responsibilities of the State, as these * let - alone ” 
are conceived to-day. Continental countries go farther in the 
way of public ownership or control than either Great Britain or 
the United States, because their inhabitants have for centuries 
been more accustomed to paternal rule. But among English- 
speaking peoples the tendency toward State interference with 
private property and business enterprise is much more marked 
than it was a hundred years, or even fifty years, ago. 


460 


Economic Transformation 


133. Socialism 


Contemporary socialists unite in making the following de¬ 
mands. First, the State shall own and operate the instruments 
What social- of production, that is, land and capital. Under 
ismis this arrangement rent, interest, and profits, as 

sources of personal income, would disappear, and private 
property would consist simply of one’s own clothing, household 
goods, money, and perhaps a house and a garden plot. Second, 
the leisure class shall be eliminated by requiring everybody 
to perform useful labor, either physical or mental. Third, the 
income of the State shall be distributed as wages and salaries 
among the workers, according to some fairer principle than 
obtains at present. 

Socialism, thus explained, is not identical with public owner¬ 
ship of railroads, telegraphs, telephones, the postal service, 
What social- and other utilities. There is still a leisure class 
ism is not and there are still personal incomes in those 
countries which have gone farthest in the direction of public 
ownership. Similarly, labor legislation is not properly de¬ 
scribed as socialistic, since it fails to abolish private property, 
the factory system, and rent, interest, and profits. 

Socialism is, in part, an outcome of the factory system, 
which completed the separation of capital and labor. The 
Socialism gulf between the capitalists and the landless, 

factory 6 propertyless, wage-earning class became wider, 

system the contrasts between rich and poor became 

sharper, than ever before. Vastly more wealth was now 
produced than in earlier ages, but it was still unequally dis¬ 
tributed. The few had too much; the many had too little. 
Radical reformers, distressed by these inequalities and dis¬ 
satisfied with the slow progress of the labor movement and 
government regulation of industry, began to proclaim the 

necessity of a wholesale reconstruction of society. 

In Great Britain the most prominent of these early radicals 
was Robert Owen, a rich manufacturer and philanthropist, 
who did much to improve the conditions of life for his em- 


Socialism 


461 


ployees. Among his innovations were cooperative shops, 
where workmen could buy goods cheaply and divide the 
profits among themselves. This principle of coop¬ 
erative distribution later attained great success in andcobpeTa^ 
England (§ 130 ), and Owen deserves credit as its tive 
originator. He also advocated cooperation in pro - muruties 
duction. His special remedy for social ills was the establishment 
of small cooperative communities, each one living by itself on a 
tract of land and producing in 
common everything needed for 
its support. He thought that 
this arrangement would retain 
the economic advantages of the 
great inventions without intro¬ 
ducing the factory system. 

Owen’s experiments in coopera¬ 
tion all failed, including the one 
which he established at New 
Harmony, Indiana. Owen thus 
belongs in the class of Utopian 1 
socialists, men who dreamed of 
ideal social systems which were 
never realized. 

Socialism is also, in part, an 
outcome of the French Revolution. That upheaval destroyed 
so many time-hallowed institutions and created so many new 
ones that it gave a great impetus to schemes for Socialism and 
the making over of society. French radical think- the French 
ers soon set out to purge the world of capitalism Revolutlon 
as their fathers had purged it of feudalism. Their ideas began 
to become popular with workingmen after the factory system, 
with its attendant evils, gained an entrance into France. 

The workers found a leader in Louis Blanc, a journalist and 
author of wide popularity. Blanc believed that every man 
had an inalienable right to remunerative employment. To 

1 A name derived from Sir Thomas More’s romance, Utopia (1515-16). The 
word “socialism” was probably coined by Owen. 



Robert Owen 

After a plaster medallion by Miss Beech. 


462 


Economic Transformation 


provide it, he proposed that the State should furnish the cap¬ 
ital for national workshops. These were to be managed by 
Louis Blanc the operatives themselves, who would divide the 
and national profits of the industry among them and thus get rid 
workshops Q f ca pit a lists altogether. Blanc’s ideas triumphed 
for a time in 1848 . The second French Republic, which was formed 
in that year (§ 140 ), expressly recognized the “right to labor,” 
set up the national workshops, and promised two francs a 
day to every registered workingman. The drain upon the 

treasury and the demorali¬ 
zation of the people by 
this State charity soon 
led the government to 
abandon the entire 
scheme. The result was 
a popular uprising only 
crushed by military 
force. 

Meanwhile, a new social¬ 
ism, more systematic and 
Karl Marx, practical than 
1818-1883 the began 

to be developed by German 
thinkers. Its chief rep¬ 
resentative was Karl Marx. 
His parents were well-to-do Jews who had embraced Chris¬ 
tianity. Marx as a young man studied at several German 
universities and received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. 
Becoming interested in economic subjects, he founded a socialist 
newspaper to advocate the cause of the working classes. The 
government suppressed it and expelled Marx from Germany. 
He went to London and lived there in exile for the rest of his 
days, finding time, in the midst of a hard struggle for existence, 
to write his famous work, Das Kapital. 1 



Karl Marx 


1 The first volume of Das Kapital appeared in 1867. The second and third 
volumes were not published until after Marx’s death. 


Socialism 


463 


Marx felt little sympathy with Utopian schemes to make 
over society. In opposition to Owen, Blanc, and other earlier 
socialists, he sought to build up a system of social¬ 
ism based on economic principles. Put in its 
simplest form, Marxism asserts that, while labor is the source of 
all value, laborers receive, in fact, only a fraction of what they 
produce. All the rest goes to the capitalistic bourgeoisie , or 
middle class, who are said to produce nothing. Capitalism, 
however, is the inevitable result of the factory system. Marx 
believed that like feudalism it forms a stage, a necessary stage, 
in the development of mankind. He also predicted that it 
would disappear with the progress of democracy, which, by 
giving working people (the proletariat) the vote, will enable 
them to displace the bourgeoisie, take production into their 
own hands, and peacefully introduce the socialist state. 

During the ’seventies of the last century the co-workers 
of Marx in Germany founded the Social Democratic Party. 
The government tried to suppress it by prohibiting The Social 
meetings of socialists and the circulation of socialist Democratic 
literature. Any effort to spread socialist doctrine Party 
was made punishable by fines and imprisonment. The police 
were also authorized to deport all suspected persons. Per¬ 
secution failed to check the socialist movement, which grew 
very fast during the years immediately preceding the World 
War. However, many Germans who were not socialists voted 
with the Social Democratic Party, in order to protest against 
autocracy and militarism. 

The Social Democratic Party provided a model for similar 
organizations of Marxian socialists in Great Britain, France, 
Italy, Austria, Russia, and the other European National 
countries, as well as in the United States, Aus- socialist 
tralia, and Japan. Congresses of delegates from parties 
the national parties have been held from time to time, in order 
to bring together the working classes of every land. In 1914 
the socialists throughout the world polled about eleven million 
votes and elected over seven hundred representatives to the 
various parliaments. 


464 


Economic Transformation 


134 . Modern Industrialism 

The most important consequence of modern industrialism 
is the increased population of the leading nations. The figures 
increase of for Europe show an increase from about 175,000,000 
population f- 0 over 400,000,000 during the nineteenth century, 
and for the continental United States from about 5,000,000 
in 1800 to over 105,000,000 in 1920. The number of people 
who can be supported in a given region now depends less on the 
food which they raise than on their production of raw materials 
and manufactured goods to exchange for food. Thus Belgium 
and Great Britain, with only a limited agriculture, support more 
inhabitants to the square mile than any other countries. There 
are, of course, certain agricultural regions (Egypt, the Ganges 
valley and delta in India, part of China) where the exceptionally 
rich soil, coupled with a very low standard of living on the part 
of the inhabitants, has also made possible a great growth of 
population within the last century. Little of the world is now 
entirely uninhabited; still less is permanently uninhabitable 
and unlikely to receive a considerable population in the future. 
Even sandy and alkaline deserts can be rendered productive 
through irrigation, while vast tracts of fertile territory, in both 
the temperate and tropical zones, can support many more people 
than at present. The population of the world, now estimated 
at about 17,000,000,000, is being added to at the rate of about 
15,000,000 a year. No such rapid growth of numbers has been 
known in any preceding historical epoch. 1 

The increased population of the leading industrial nations 
has been largely concentrated in cities. The rise of the factory 
Concentra- system and the improvement of facilities for 
tion of travel and transportation soon led to an extraor- 

popuiation dinary urban development. Old cities grew with 
marvelous rapidity, while former villages and towns became 
transformed into new cities. At the opening of the nineteenth 
century western Europe was still mainly rural, as eastern Europe 
is to-day. Europe, as a whole, had fourteen cities of more than 


1 See map facing page 468. 


Modern Industrialism 


465 


one hundred thousand inhabitants in 1800; in 1900 it had one 
hundred and forty such cities. London, which in 1800 con¬ 
tained under a million inhabitants, now counts seven millions 
within its borders; Paris contains five times as many people 



as shortly before the French Revolution; and Berlin has grown 
ten-fold since the reign of Frederick the Great. The develop¬ 
ment of provincial centers within the past century has been 
equally remarkable. The concentration of population is also 
well shown in the case of the United States. This country in 
































































































































466 


Economic Transformation 


1800 contained only six cities of over eight thousand inhabitants; 
now, according to the census of 1920, more than half of the 
American people are city dwellers. 

There has been an enormous emigration of Europeans during 
the past hundred years to lands beyond the seas. The United 
Emigration States received over 33,000,000 immigrants be¬ 
tween 1820 and 1920, nearly all coming from Eu¬ 
rope. Millions more went to the British colonies and to South 
America. The migration movement became most marked after 
the middle of the nineteenth century, when the improvements 
in steam navigation so greatly multiplied and cheapened facilities 
for travel on the ocean. The present tendency of new coun¬ 
tries is to limit the number of immigrants they will receive in 
any one year and by various tests, both physical and mental, 
to select only the right class of settlers. The new Immigra¬ 
tion Act of the United States, which came into force in 1924, 
illustrates this tendency. 

The map of the occupations of mankind 1 affords an idea of 
the present industrialization of the world. As far as Europe is 
industrializa- concerned, we see that the western part of the 
tion Continent has been pretty thoroughly industrial¬ 

ized, except for such areas as western Ireland, northern Scotland, 
central Spain, southern Italy, the Alpine region, and the Scan¬ 
dinavian peninsula. The industrial development of Russia is 
limited to the western and southern parts of the country; 
that of the Balkan states is negligible. Large and growing 
manufacturing districts exist in India, China, Japan, on the 
eastern coast of Australia, and in New Zealand. The manu¬ 
factures of Africa and South America are too inconsiderable for 
representation on a small-scale map. In North America both 
Canada and Mexico have begun to share with the United States 
in the benefits of modern industrialism. 

The increased wealth of the leading nations is another con- 
Increase of spicuous economic feature of our age. Modern 
wealth machines are really non-human slaves, working 

without wages and without fatigue. It has been estimated that 

1 See the map facing this page. 



m 












































































































Modern Industrialism 


467 


in the textile industries alone they accomplish as much as fifty 
billion men and women could do without them. Statistics of 
government revenues and expenditures, imports and exports, 
income tax returns, deposits in savings banks, and assets of life 
insurance companies show how wealth has multiplied, especially 
within recent years. Other indications are furnished by the in¬ 
crease in the annual production of coal, in the amount of iron ore 
mined annually, in railway construction, and in the tonnage of 
merchant vessels. The enormous public loans, successfully 
floated during the World War, also reveal the resources now 
at the command of industrial peoples. 

Notwithstanding the creation of huge individual fortunes, 
the general standard of living has been raised by the addition of 
innumerable things — sugar, coffee, linen, cotton Diffusion of 
goods, glass, chinaware, wall paper, ready-made weaIth 
clothing, books, newspapers, pictures — which were once en¬ 
joyed only by a few wealthy persons. If the rich are un¬ 
doubtedly getting richer, the poor are not getting poorer in 
western Europe and the United States. As a matter of fact, 
poverty is most acute in such thickly populated countries as 
Russia, India, and China, which modern industrialism has only 
begun to penetrate. 

No one familiar with social conditions in large cities can deny 
the existence there of very many people below or scarcely above 
the poverty line. Socialists assert that poverty causes of 
is caused by the unequal and unjust distribution poverty 
of wealth under the present economic organization of society. 
The truth seems to be that no single condition — over-popula¬ 
tion, property in land, competition, the factory system — ex¬ 
plains poverty, for each one has been absent in previous social 
stages. The causes of poverty, in fact, are as complex as modern 
life, some being due to faults of personal character or physical 
and mental defects, and others being produced by lack of edu¬ 
cation, bad surroundings, corrupt or inefficient government, and 
economic conditions which result in lack of employment, high 
cost of living, monopolies, and the like. 

Since there is no single cause of poverty, there can be no ; 


4 68 


Economic Transformation 


single remedy for it. Putting aside socialism as undesirable, 
one may still look forward confidently to the prevention 
Prevention muc h poverty by trade-union activity, by gov- 

and abolition ernment regulation of industry (including old- 
of poverty a g e p ens i onSj insurance against sickness and 
disability, protection against non-employment, and the mini¬ 
mum wage), by education of the unskilled, by improved hous¬ 
ing, and by all the agencies and methods of private philan¬ 
thropy. One may even reasonably anticipate the complete 
abolition of poverty, at least of all suffering from hunger, cold, 
and nakedness, in those progressive countries which have already 
abolished slavery and serfdom. Indeed, with the increase 
of wages, the growing demand for intelligent work, and the 
spread of popular education, skilled laborers have multiplied 
so rapidly as to outnumber those whose labor is entirely un¬ 
skilled, and they already live better than did the majority of 
the upper classes a century ago. 

The evils of modern industrialism, though real, have been 
exaggerated. They are and were the evils accompanying the 
Economic transition from one stage of society to another, 
progress Few WO uld wish to retrace their steps to an age 
when there were no factories, no railroads, and no great 
mechanical inventions. Machinery now does much of the 
roughest and hardest work and, by saving human labor, makes 
it possible to shorten hours of toil. The world’s workers, in 
consequence, have opportunities for recreation and education 
previously denied them. Modern industrialism is gradually 
diffusing the necessaries and comforts, and even many of the 
luxuries of life, among all peoples in all lands. 

Studies 

i. For what are the following persons famous: Arkwright; Cart¬ 
wright; Watt; Stephenson; Whitney; Fulton; Bell; Edison; 
Langley; and Marconi? 2. Using materials in encyclopedias, 
prepare reports for class presentation upon the following inventions and 
discoveries : (a) the bicycle; ( b) the typewriter; ( c) lucifer matches; 
(d) illuminating gas; ( e ) electric lighting; (/') dynamite; ( g) photog¬ 
raphy, and ( h ) the radio. 3. “ A history of inventions is a history 


120°Longitude West 80°from Greenwich 40°_0^_ 40°Longitude East 80 from Greenwich 120 
















































































































































































, 






1 





















■ 

















































































Modern Industrialism 


469 


of the progress of mankind.” Comment on this statement. 4. “Since 
the middle of the eighteenth century changes have come to pass which 
have made civilized mankind rather nature’s conqueror than its drudge 
and slave.” Comment on this statement. 5. Name in order the 
early inventions in the textile industry and explain the changes which 
each one produced. 6. Enumerate some of the economic and social 
consequences of the wide use of the automobile in the United States. 
7. “ Of all inventions, the alphabet and the printing press alone excepted, 
those inventions which abridge distance have done most for the civiliza¬ 
tion of our species.” Comment on this statement. 8. “ Next to 
steam-locomotion, the telegraph is probably the most powerful mechani¬ 
cal agent invented for promoting the unification of the world.” Com¬ 
ment on this statement. 9. How has the construction of the Suez 
and Panama canals affected oceanic trade routes? 10. Show how 
modern commerce has been facilitated by the submarine cable, wireless 
telegraphy, the postal system, and marine insurance, or underwriting. 
11. Why should there be an international or world price for such 
commodities as wheat and cotton? 12. Mention all the kinds of 
insurance (other than life insurance) familiar to you. 13. Distinguish 
a commercial bank from a savings bank and from a trust company. 
14. Why did Great Britain adopt a free-trade policy? Why does she 
maintain it, when other nations follow a policy of protection? 15. Ac¬ 
count for the development of landlordism in Great Britain. 16. Com¬ 
ment . on some of the social effects of peasant proprietorships. 
17. Explain what is meant by the following : (a) capital; ( b ) capitalism; 
(c) domestic system; and ( d) factory system. 18. Compare the 
modern trade union with the medieval craft guild. 19. What instances 
of state and municipal ownership in this country are familiar to you? 
20. Mention some of the probable advantages and disadvantages of the 
socialist state. 21. “ The growth of large cities constitutes perhaps 
the greatest of all the problems of modern civilization.” Comment on 
this statement. 22. Indicate on the map (facing page 468) the prin¬ 
cipal uninhabited or sparsely inhabited regions of the globe. 23. Indi¬ 
cate on the map (facing page 466) the chief agricultural and mining 
areas of the world. 


CHAPTER XV 


DEMOCRACY AND NATIONALISM IN EUROPE 1 
135. Democratic and National Movements 

The idea of democracy has been a powerful influence in mold¬ 
ing modern history. What is democracy? The word comes 
What is from the Greek and means popular rule — “ govern- 
democracy? men t 0 f the people, by the people, and for the 
people.” Democracy is thus distinguished from autocracy, 
the rule of one, and from oligarchy, the rule of a few. 

Ancient democracy was exclusive. All the people did not 
rule, even in the most democratic of Greek cities. Slaves, 
“The a very considerable element of the population, 

people” possessed no political rights, while freedmen and 
foreigners were seldom allowed to take part in public affairs. 
A democratic state at the present time does not recognize 
any slave class, freely admits foreigners to citizenship, and 
grants the suffrage to all native-born and naturalized men, 
irrespective of birth, property, or social condition. The recent 
extension of the suffrage to women in many progressive coun- 

1 Webster, Readings in Modern European History, chapter xxi, “ The French 
Revolution in Horace Walpole’s Letters”; chapter xxii, “Scenes of the French 
Revolution”; chapter xxiii, “Letters and Proclamations of Napoleon”; chapter 
xxiv, “Napoleon as Described by Metternich”; chapter xxv, “A Soldier of the 
First Empire”; chapter xxvi, “The Congress of Vienna”; chapter xxvii, “The 
Revolutions of 1830 and 1848”; chapter xxviii, “ ‘Young Italy’ ”; chapter xxix, 
“Garibaldi’s Campaigns”; chapter xxx, “Bismarck and the Unification of Ger¬ 
many”; chapter xxxi, “The Second French Empire”; chapter xxxii, “The 
Franco-German War”; chapter xxxiii, “European Politics in the ’Seventies and 
’Eighties” ; chapter xxxiv, “ Five Prime Ministers of Great Britain” ; chapter xxxv, 
“Russia before the Revolution”; chapter xl, “Scenes of the Russian Revolu¬ 
tion.” 


470 


Democratic and National Movements 471 


tries marks the final step in broadening the conception of “the 
people” to include practically all adult citizens. 

As a working system of government, democracy implies 
the sway of majorities. It is usually impossible to wait until 
all the people are of one mind regarding proposed Ma j orit i es 
measures or policies. A unanimous or nearly and minori- 
unanimous decision is best, of course; failing that, ties 
we must “count heads” and see which side has the more ad¬ 
herents. How far should the sway of a majority go? If it 
goes so far as to suppress free opinion, free speech, and free dis¬ 
cussion in the public press, then there is little to choose between 
the absolutism of a democracy and the absolutism of an autoc¬ 
racy. A majority can be as tyrannical as any divine-right 
monarch. The danger of abusing majority rule makes it neces¬ 
sary to safeguard the rights of minorities, whether great or 
small. After a decision has been reached upon any question, 
the minority should still be entitled to convert (if it can) the 
majority to its views by free and open debate. In this way 
democratic government comes to rest upon common consent, 
upon the willing cooperation of all the citizens. 

Democracy in antiquity was direct, while that of to-day is 
representative. Every citizen of Athens or Rome had a right 
to appear and vote in the popular assembly. Direct and 
This form of government became impossible after a tive de^~ 
the growth of large modern states. The popula- mocracy 
tion was too numerous, the distances were too great, for all 
the citizens to meet in public gatherings. Voters now simply 
choose some one to represent them in a legislature or congress. 

The representative system, though not unknown to the 
Greeks and Romans, was little used by them. It developed 
during the Middle Ages, when such countries as Develop 
Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, France, and men t 0 f 
England established legislative bodies representing ™ p n resenta " 
the three “estates” of clergy, nobility, and com- lon 
moners (§80). Most of these medieval legislatures were after¬ 
ward suppressed by the kings, but the English Parliament 
continued to lead a vigorous existence. It thus furnished a 


472 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 


model for imitation, first by the American colonies, then by 
revolutionary France, and during the past hundred years by 
most European countries. 

The great economic changes traced in the preceding chapter 
created a numerous body of wage-earners, who moved from 
Democracy rural districts and villages into the factories, sweat- 
and modern shops, and tenements of the great cities. There, 
industrialism j n S pj te a crow( t e d, miserable existence, they 

gradually learned the value of organization. They formed trade 
unions in order to secure higher wages and shorter hours. They 
read newspapers and pamphlets, listened to speeches by agi¬ 
tators, and began to press for laws which would improve their 
lot. Then they went further and demanded the right to vote, 
to hold office, and to enjoy all the liberty and equality which 
the bourgeoisie , or middle class, had won from monarchs and 
aristocrats. Modern industrialism thus furnished much of the 
driving power for the democratic movement of the nineteenth 
and twentieth centuries. 

The idea of nationalism has been at least as powerful as that 
of democracy in molding modern history. What is a nation? 
What is a The word should not be confused with “state.” 

nation? The latter term refers to a group of people living 

under a government which makes laws, appoints officers to 
enforce these laws, and has an army for defense against other 
states. A nation may or may not be organized as a state, but 
nevertheless those who belong to it feel themselves united by 
common ideals and purposes. 

The sentiment of unity is produced in various ways. The 
use of one language helps to unite people, but it is not always 
The senti- essential. Two languages are spoken in Belgium 

ment of and three in Switzerland. One religion also acts 

as a unifying force; nevertheless, most modern 
nations include followers of several religions. National feeling, 
in fact, is mainly an historic product. That which makes a 
nation is a common heritage of memories of the past and hopes 
for the future. Ireland was long joined to England, but Irish 
nationality did not disappear. Bohemia, long subject to the 


Democratic and National Movements 473 

Hapsburgs, never lost her national spirit. The Jews have been 
scattered throughout the world for many centuries, yet they 
continue to look forward to their reunion in the Holy Land. 
While national feeling endures, a nation cannot perish. 

Nationalism scarcely existed among the ancient Greeks, whose 
interests centered in the city-state. It was equally unfamiliar 
to the Romans, who created a world-wide empire. Ri se 0 f 
It had little opportunity for development through- nationalism 
out most of the Middle Ages, while feudalism prevailed. As we 
have seen (§ 80), however, national feeling did arise in England, 
France, Spain, and some other countries by the close of the 
medieval period. This feeling became stronger with the lapse 
of time, especially after the French Revolution. The revolu¬ 
tionists were ardent patriots, and from them other European 
peoples learned to substitute love of country for loyalty to a 
monarch. 

The national movement of the nineteenth and twentieth 
centuries, like the democratic movement, has been fostered 
by the great economic changes already studied. Nat i on aiism 
Railroads, canals, steamboats, telegraphs, and and modem 
telephones have been compared to a network of mdustnalism 
arteries and veins carrying the blood of the nation from the 
capital to the remotest province. These increased facilities for 
travel and communication made it far easier for the people of 
each country to realize their common interests than when they 
lived isolated in small rural communities. Old nations, like 
Great Britain and France, became more closely knit; new 
nations, like Italy and Germany, arose; and the oppressed 
nationalities in other European lands began to agitate for self- 
government or for complete independence. 

Democratic and national movements are intimately related. 
When a people demands self-government or when a nation 
demands independence, there is in each case a Democracy 
desire to be ruled by consent and not by compul- and 
sion. This means that democratic institutions, natlonalism 
such as constitutions, parliaments, and universal suffrage, work 
well only in a community unified by national sentiment. We 


474 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 

must have a real nation in order to have a real democracy. 
The French revolutionists, who created the idea of the “ father¬ 
land,” as European peoples understand that term to-day, also 
founded a truly democratic state in Europe. 


136 . The French Revolution 


What is called the French Revolution refers to a series of 
events in France, between 1789 and 1799, by which divine- 
Revoiu- right monarchy gave way to a republic, and class 
tionary distinctions and privileges disappeared in favor 

of social equality. This revolution started in 
France, not because the misery of the people had become more 
intolerable there than in other parts of the Continent, but 
because France was then the most advanced of Continental 
countries. French peasants and artisans were free enough and 
intelligent enough to be critical of their government. Next to 
Great Britain, France contained the most numerous, prosper¬ 
ous, and influential bourgeoisie. Members of this class furnished 
the Revolution with its principal leaders. Even the nobility 
and clergy included many men who realized the abuses of the 
Old Regime and wished to abolish them. In short, the revo¬ 
lutionary impulse stirred all ranks of French society. 

That impulse came in part from across the Channel. The 
spectacle of the Puritan Revolution and the “ Glorious Revo¬ 
lution” in the seventeenth century affected 
Frenchmen in the eighteenth century. The Eng¬ 
lish had put one king to death and had expelled 
another; they had established the supremacy of Parliament 
in the state. It was the example of parliamentary England 
which Montesquieu held up for imitation by his country¬ 
men. It was the political philosophy of the Englishman, John 
Locke, upon which Rousseau founded his doctrine of the sov¬ 
ereignty of the people (§ 112). 

A second impulse came from across the Atlantic. The 
American Declaration of Independence, which followed Locke’s 
and Rousseau’s theories in declaring that all men are created 


England 
and the 
Revolution 


The French Revolution 


475 


equal and are endowed with rights to “life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness,” served as an inspiration to the pioneers 
of revolution in France (§ 122). After the close of A 

America 

the Revolutionary War, the French common sol- and the 
diers, together with Lafayette and other officers, Revolutlon 
returned home to spread republican doctrines. Very important 



was the work of Benjamin Franklin, who for nearly a decade 
represented the American government at Paris. His engaging 
manners, practical wisdom, and high principles won general 
admiration. The portrait of the Philadelphia printer hung in 
the houses, and at republican festivals his bust figured side 
by side with that of Rousseau. “Homage to Franklin,” cried 
an enthusiastic Frenchman, “he gave us our first lessons in 
liberty.” 








476 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 

To understand the outbreak of the French Revolution it is 
necessary to go back to the long reign of Louis XV, the great- 
Louis xv, grandson of Louis XIV. France had never had 
1715-1774 so unkingly a ruler as this successor of the “ Grand 
Monarch.” The frivolities and immoralities of his court at 



The Storming of the Bastille 

Frenchmen date the beginning of the Revolution on July 14, 1789 (“ Bastille Day ”), when 
a mob of Parisians, reinforced by deserters from the army, attacked and captured the Bastille, 
a fortress where political offenders had often been confined by tyrannical kings. The Bastille 
symbolized the abuses of the Old Regime, and its fall created a great sensation in France and 
other countries. Lafayette sent the key of the fortress to Washington at Mount Vernon. 


Versailles undermined the loyalty of Frenchmen to the Crown, 
and his wars and extravagance brought France to the verge of 
bankruptcy. Louis XV did his best to stifle the growing vol¬ 
ume of complaints against the government. A rigid censorship 
muzzled the press. Post-office officials opened letters and re- 

















The French Revolution 


477 


vealed their contents to the king. Obnoxious books and pam¬ 
phlets were burned, and their authors were imprisoned. No 
man’s liberty was safe, for the police, if provided with an order 
of arrest signed by the king, could send any one to jail, perhaps 
for years. In spite of all these measures of suppression, opposi¬ 
tion to king and court steadily increased. 



bal&^cAanu) 
tot tot tot 
bon Commie 

ll^aud avoir cornr a loavnye 
Forging a New Constitution 

A contemporary cartoon, showing the three orders in the National Assembly. 


Louis XVI, the grandson of Louis XV, mounted the throne 
while still a young man. Virtuous, pious, and well-meaning, 
he was the sort of ruler who in quiet times might Louis XVI, 
have won the esteem of his subjects. He was, 1774-1792 
however, weak, indolent, slow of thought, and slow of decision. 
He did not know how to reign. Conditions in France went 
from bad to worse: the public debt increased rapidly; and 
at length it became impossible to borrow more money to cover 
the annual deficits in the treasury. Louis XVI then yielded 
reluctantly to the popular demand that the Estates-General, 




478 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 


which had not met for one hundred and seventy-five years, 
should be called together to see what could be done to save 
the tottering government. 

The representatives of the clergy, the nobles, and the com¬ 
mons, or Third Estate, assembled at Versailles in 1789. Very 
The National speedily the commoners, under Mirabeau and 
Assembly, other competent leaders, took charge of the situa¬ 
tion, called themselves the National Assembly, and 
declared their right to act for the nation as a whole. The 



A contemporary cartoon representing the French people hammering to pieces with then- 
flails all the emblems of the feudal system, including the knight’s armor and sword and the 
bishop’s crosier and miter. 


Estates-General, the old feudal assembly of France, was thus 
transformed into a parliament representing the French people. 
It remained in session for two years, and during this time under¬ 
took useful reforms in Church and State. 

The National Assembly gave to France in 1791 a written 
constitution. It established a legislative assembly of a single 
Constitution chamber, with wide powers over every branch of 
of 1791 government. The hereditary monarchy was 

retained, but it was a monarchy in little more than name. 





The French Revolution 


479 


The king could not dissolve the legislature, and he had only a 
“suspensive veto” of its measures. A bill passed by three 
successive legislatures became a law even without his consent. 
Mirabeau wished to give the king greater authority, but the 
National Assembly distrusted Louis XVI as a possible traitor to 
the Revolution and took every precaution to render him harm¬ 
less. The distrust which the bourgeois framers of the constitu¬ 
tion felt toward the lower classes was shown by the clause 
limiting the privilege of voting to those who paid taxes equiva¬ 
lent to at least three days’ wages. Almost half of the citizens, 
some of them peasants but most of them artisans, were thus 
excluded from the franchise. 

The National Assembly prefixed to the constitution a Declara¬ 
tion of the Rights of Man. This memorable document, which 
shows Rousseau’s influence in almost every line, D ec i arat j on of 
formed a comprehensive statement of the princi- the Rights 
pies underlying the Revolution. All persons, so of Man 
ran the Declaration, shall be equally eligible to all dignities, 
public positions, and occupations, according to their abilities. 
No person shall be arrested or imprisoned except according to 
law. Any* one accused of wrongdoing shall be presumed inno¬ 
cent until he is adjudged guilty. Every citizen may freely 
speak, write, and print his opinions, including his religious 
views, subject only to responsibility for the abuse of this free¬ 
dom. No one shall be deprived of his property, except for 
public purposes, and then only after indemnification. These 
clauses of the Declaration reappeared in the constitutions 
framed in France and other Continental countries during the 
nineteenth century. The document, as a whole, should be 
compared with the English Bill of Rights and the first ten 
amendments to the American Constitution (§§ in, 123). 

The first phase of the French Revolution was now ended. Up 
to this time it appeared rather as a reformation, which abolished 
the Old Regime and substituted a limited mon- Reactionaries 
archy for absolutism and divine right. The new and radicals 
order of things was naturally most distasteful to Louis XVI and 
the court party, to many nobles, who found their property and 


480 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 


their privileges taken away, and also to many members of the 
clergy. Besides these reactionaries who opposed the Revolu¬ 
tion, there were the radicals who thought that it had not gone 
far enough. The radicals secured their chief following among 
the poverty-stricken workingmen of the cities, those without 
property and with no steady employment. Of all classes in 
France, the urban proletariat seemed to have gained the least 
by the Revolution. No chance of future betterment lay before 
them, for the Constitution of 1791 expressly provided that only 
taxpayers could vote or hold public office. The proletariat 
might well believe that, in spite of all high-sounding phrases 
about the “rights of man,” they had merely exchanged one 
set of maste s for another, the rule of the privileged classes for 
that of the bourgeoisie. 

A new influence began at this time to affect the course of the 
Revolution. Continental monarchs felt no sympathy with a 
Foreign in- popular movement which threatened the stability 
tervention G f their own thrones. If absolutism and divine 
right were overthrown in France, these might before long be 
overthrown in Austria and Prussia. The Austrian monarch, a 
brother of Louis XVTs queen, Marie Antoinette, now joined 
with the Prussian king in a statement to the effect that the 
restoration of the old government in France formed an object of 
“common interest to all sovereigns of Europe.” Foreign 
soldiers then entered France, to suppress the Revolution by 
force. 

It was under these circumstances that the revolutionary 
movement entered a second and more violent phase. The 
First French radicals organized an uprising of the Parisian 
Republic, proletariat, seized the reins of government, abol¬ 
ished the National Assembly, and declared a re¬ 
public. Then followed the so-called Reign of Terror, during 
which the king and queen and several thousand nobles and clerics 
were put to death as enemies of the Revolution. The policy 
of terrorism cowed the reactionaries and made it possible for the 
French to present a united front to foreign invasion. Their 
armies went forth to battle, full of enthusiasm for the republic, 


The Napoleonic Era 


481 


and to the inspiring strains of the Marseillaise 1 drove the in¬ 
vaders from the “sacred soil ” of France. 

France had been declared a republic, but as a matter of fact 
dictatorial power was exercised first by various committees 
and then from 1795 to 1799 by the Directory, a The Directory 
board of five men. The Directory proved to be and Napoleon 
incompetent, and its incompetence led to its overthrow. A 
youthful general, supported by the bayonets of his soldiers, 
executed a coup d'etat 2 and made himself virtually master of 
France. The youthful general was Napoleon Bonaparte. 

137. The Napoleonic Era 

The history of France, from the overthrow of the Directory 
in 1799 to the battle of Waterloo in 1815, forms the biography 
of Napoleon Bonaparte. His extraordinary abili- Napo i eon > s 
ties enabled him to take full advantage of the personality 
chances which the revolutionary era offered to men and character 
of talent and ambition. Endowed with a splendid constitution, 
he could toil eighteen hours a day and go without sleep for long 
periods. His mind kept its keenness after the most exhausting 
activities on the battlefield or in the council room. Sober in 
his habits, with little taste for art, letters, or the refinements of 
life, he lived only for work — the work of a warrior and a states¬ 
man. His military genius is admitted; he has no superiors, 
perhaps no equals, among the great captains of modern times. 
His capacity as a civil ruler seems even more remarkable, con¬ 
sidering how completely he reconstructed western and central 
Europe in sixteen years. Nor did his character lack an attrac¬ 
tive side: he made devoted friends and could talk good-hu¬ 
moredly and frankly with all sorts of people. Yet no one can fol¬ 
low Napoleon’s career, especially in its later phases, without 
being impressed with the man’s selfishness, untruthfulness, and 
unscrupulousness. An appetite for war and a belief in the 

1 A patriotic song, the words and music of which were composed in 1792 by Rouget 
de Lisle. 

2 French for a “ stroke of state.” 


482 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 

necessity of dazzling France by brilliant victories drove him 
into constant acts of aggression and rendered him callous to 
human suffering. He could call a Russian battlefield, heaped 
with the bodies of friend and foe, the “finest” he had ever seen, a 
remark which contrasts with Wellington’s words after Waterloo 
that “next to a battle lost the greatest misery is a battle gained.” 

Throughout Napoleon’s ca¬ 
reer, he appears as essen¬ 
tially an adventurer, skirt¬ 
ing uneasily the edge of ruin 
and falling at last a victim 
to the enemies he himself 
had made. 

After the coup d’etat Na¬ 
poleon proceeded to frame 
The Constitu- a constitution, 
tion of 1799 placed the 
executive power in the 
hands of three consuls, 
appointed for ten years. 
The First Consul (Napoleon 
himself) was really supreme. 
To him belonged the com¬ 
mand of the army and navy, 
the right of naming and 
dismissing all the chief 
state officials, and the pro¬ 
posal of all new laws. Napoleon then submitted the constitu¬ 
tion to the people for ratification. The popular vote, known as 
a plebiscite, 1 showed an overwhelming majority in favor of the 
new government. 

Napoleon’s power as First Consul enabled him to carry out 
France many reforms which continued the work of the 

centralized Revolution. One of his measures was intended to 
centralize all authority in the capital at Paris. The revolution- 

1 From the Latin plebiscitum, referring to a vote or decree of the common people 
C Plebs ). 



Napoleon’s Birthplace, Ajaccio 


Napoleon was born at Ajaccio, Corsica, in 1769, 
only a year after that island became a French pos¬ 
session. His birthplace is well preserved, and the 
room in which he first saw the light is still shown 
to visitors. 




NAPOLEON AS FIRST CONSUL 
After the painting by J.-B. Isabey, 
Versailles Gallery. 













The Napoleonic Era 


483 


ists had already divided France into a large number of depart¬ 
ments, approximately uniform in size and population. Napo¬ 
leon appointed a prefect for each department and a sub-pre¬ 
fect for each subdivision of a department, and also named 
the mayors of the towns and cities. This arrangement enabled 
him to make his will felt promptly throughout the length and 
breadth of France. It survived his downfall 
and still continues to be the French system 
of local government. 

The same desire for unity and precision 
led Napoleon to complete the codification of 
French law. Before the Revo- The law 
lution nearly three hundred codified 
different local codes had existed in France, 
giving force to Voltaire’s remark that a 
traveler there changed his laws as often as 
he changed his post-horses. The revolution¬ 
ists began the work of replacing this variety 
of laws — Frankish, Roman, feudal, and 
royal — by a single uniform code. Napoleon A French Dragoon 
and the commission of legal experts over OF THE Time of 
whose deliberations he presided finished the THE CoNSULATE 
task after about four years’ labor. The Code 
Napoleon contained many democratic prin¬ 
ciples, such as social equality, religious toleration, and jury 
trial, and carried these principles into the foreign lands con¬ 
quered by the French. It is still the prevailing law of both 
France and Belgium, while the codes of modern Holland, Italy, 
and Portugal have taken it as a model. 

The revolutionists had begun by separating Roman Cathol¬ 
icism in France from papal control and had ended by withdraw¬ 
ing all state support of the Church. Napoleon, The Church 
though not himself an adherent of any form of restored 
Christianity, felt the necessity of conciliating French Catholics 
who remained faithful to Rome. An agreement, called the Con¬ 
cordat, was now drawn up, providing for the restoration of 
Catholicism as the official religion. Napoleon reserved to 




484 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 


other 

measures 


himself the appointment of bishops and archbishops, and the 
pope gave up all claims to the property of the Church, which had 
been confiscated by the revolutionists. The Concordat con¬ 
tinued to regulate the relations between France and the Papacy 
for more than a century. 1 

A long list might be drawn up of the other measures which 
exhibit Napoleon’s qualities as a statesman. He founded the 
Napoleon’s Bank of France, still one of the leading financial 
institutions of the world. He established a system 
of higher education to take the place of the Church 
colleges and universities which had been abolished by a revolu¬ 
tionary decree. He planned and partly carried out a vast 
network of canals and inland waterways, thus improving the 
means of communication and trade throughout France. Like 
the Roman emperors, he constructed a system of military 
highways radiating from the capital city to the remotest dis¬ 
tricts, in addition to two wonderful Alpine roads connecting 
France with Italy. Like the Romans, also, he had a taste 
for building, and many of the monuments which make Paris 
so splendid a city belong to the Napoleonic era. 

Napoleon enjoyed the support of all Frenchmen except the 
radicals, who would not admit that the Revolution had ended, 
Napoleon an d royalists, who wished to restore the Bour- 
emperorof bon monarchy. When the people were asked to 
vote on the question, “Shall Napoleon Bonaparte 
be consul for life?” the answering “ayes” num¬ 
bered over three and a half millions, the “noes” only a few 
thousands. Another plebiscite decided, by an equally large 
majority, that the First Consul should become emperor. Before 
the high altar of Notre Dame Cathedral at Paris and in the 
presence of the pope, the modern Charlemagne placed a golden 
laurel wreath upon his own head and assumed the title of 
Napoleon I, emperor of the French. 

The new emperor set up again the etiquette and ceremo¬ 
nial of the Old Regime. Already he had established the Legion 


1 From 1802 to 1905. 


The Napoleonic Era 


485 


of Honor to reward those who most industriously served him. 
Now he created a nobility. His relatives and ministers became 
kings, princes, dukes, and counts; his ablest gen- The imperial 
erals became marshals of France. “My titles,” s lor y 
Napoleon declared, “are a sort of civic crown; one can win 
them through one’s own efforts.” 

France, intoxicated with the im¬ 
perial glory, forgot that she had come 
under the rule of one The imperial 
man. What hostile crit- despotism 
icism Frenchmen might have leveled 
against Napoleon was stifled by the 
secret police, who arrested and im¬ 
prisoned hundreds of persons op¬ 
posed to the emperor. The cen¬ 
sorship of books and newspapers 
prevented any expression of public 
opinion. Many journals were sup¬ 
pressed ; the remainder were allowed 
to publish only articles approved by 
the government. Even the schools 
and churches were made pillars of the 
new order, and Napoleon went so 
far as to prepare a catechism setting 
forth the duty of good Christians to 
love, respect, and obey their em¬ 
peror. He established in these ways head of the republic appears in the 
as great a despotism as that of Louis 
XIV. 



Cross or the Legion or 
Honor 

Instituted by Napoleon in 1802; 
given to both soldiers and civilians 
for distinguished services to the 
state. In the present order of the 
French Republic the symbolical 


center, and a laurel wreath replaces 
the imperial crown. 


The wars of the French Revolution, which began as a con¬ 
flict between democracy and monarchy, were continued by 
Napoleon as wars of conquest. The “successor of The Napo- 
Charlemagne,” who carried the Roman eagles on his leonic wars 
military standards, dreamed of universal sovereignty. Supreme 
in France, he would also be supreme in Europe. No lasting 
peace was possible with such a man, unless the European nations 
submitted tamely to his will. They would not submit, and 


486 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 


as a result the Continent for more than a decade was drenched 
with blood. 

Great Britain was Napoleon’s most persistent and relentless 
enemy. That island-kingdom, which had fought so strenuously 
Hostility of against Louis XIV (§ 106), could never consent to 
Great Britain cre ation of another French empire restricting 
her trade in the profitable markets of the Continent and dominat- 



The Napoleonic Empire 


ing western Europe. To preserve the European balance of 
power Great Britain formed coalition after coalition of states 
opposed to France, using her money, her ships, and her soldiers 
unsparingly, and at length successfully, in the effort. 

The military exploits of Napoleon seem to the historian of 
civilization purely destructive, and so akin to the pestilences, 
The Napole- famines, earthquakes, and other calamities that 
ornc empire from time to time have brought misery to mankind. 
Napoleon built up a great empire, including, with its depen- 
















“ Liberty, Equality, Fraternity ” 


487 


dencies and allied states, most of western Europe, but his con¬ 
quests were not lasting. After his downfall the victorious 
allies concluded with France a peace which stripped that coun¬ 
try of all the territories annexed by Napoleon. His military 
exploits, however glittering, thus had no permanent effect on 
the map of Europe. 

Napoleon carried all before him until his oppressive rule 
aroused the patriotic sentiments of the European peoples. 
The same love of country and willingness to die for Downfall of 
her which had saved republican France when Napoleon 
attacked by autocratic monarchies, now inspired the British 
in their long contest with the French emperor, spurred the 
Portuguese and Spaniards to revolt against him, and strengthened 
the will of Austrians, Prussians, and Russians never to accept 
a foreign despotism. This national resistance to Napoleon, 
aroused throughout the Continent, destroyed his empire. The 
end came in 1815, with the famous battle of Waterloo, where the 
combined British and Prussian forces overwhelmed his last 
army. The emperor himself escaped with difficulty to Paris. 

After Waterloo Napoleon abdicated the throne and gave 
himself up to the British, who exiled him to the island of St. 
Helena. The fallen emperor lived there for six The Napole- 
years, without wife or child, but surrounded by a onic le s end 
few intimate friends to whom he dictated his memoirs. After his 
death, at the early age of fifty-two, France forgot the sufferings 
he had caused her and remembered only his glory. Poets, 
painters, and singers created out of the “Little Corporal” a 
purely legendary figure. The world-despot appeared as the 
heir of the Revolution, a crusader for liberty, a foe of tyrants; 
and in this guise he found his way irresistibly to the hearts of 
the French people. 

138. “ Liberty, Equality, Fraternity ” 

The French Revolution differed sharply from previous revolu¬ 
tionary movements. The Puritan Revolution and Principles 
the “Glorious Revolution” in England were car- of 1789 
ried out by men of the upper and middle classes, who wished 


488 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 


to limit the royal power and establish the supremacy of Parlia¬ 
ment. Even the American Revolution was guided by conserva¬ 
tive statesmen, at least as anxious for the rights of property as 
for the rights of man. The French Revolution also began mainly 
as a middle-class movement, but it soon reached the lower 
classes. Their principles found expression in the famous motto, 
“Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” 

“Liberty” meant the recognition of popular sovereignty. 
Government was to be no longer the privilege of a divine- 

„ right ruler, 
however be¬ 
nevolent or “enlightened”; 
henceforth, it was to be 
conducted constitutionally 
in accordance with the will 
of the people. Since the 
first constitution (that of 
1791) the French have often 
changed their form of gov¬ 
ernment, but they have 
always had a written con¬ 
stitution. Napoleon’s pleb¬ 
iscites show that he paid 
at least lip homage to the 
principle of popular sover¬ 
eignty, and it is certain 
that during both the consulate and the empire he enjoyed the 
support of the great majority of Frenchmen. On the other 
hand, he did not respect all the “rights of man” which the 
revolutionists had proclaimed with such enthusiasm. Freedom 
of worship prevailed under Napoleon, but the emperor allowed 
neither free speech nor a free press. 

“Equality” meant the abolition of privilege. The Revolu¬ 
tion made all citizens equal before the law. It opened to every 
one the positions in the civil service, the Church, 
and the army. It abolished serfdom and manorial 
dues, thus destroying the last vestiges of feudalism. It sup- 



Seal of the First French Republic, 
1792-1804 

The Goddess of Liberty, with one hand grasping 
a pole surmounted by the liberty cap and with the 
other hand resting on the old Roman fasces. 


Equality ” 



Reconstruction and Reaction 489 

pressed the guilds, thus releasing industry from medieval 
shackles. It cancelled all exemptions from taxation and sub¬ 
stituted a new fiscal system which taxed men according to their 
means. Most Frenchmen were content to accept Napoleon’s 
rule largely because he retained and extended these achieve¬ 
ments of the Revolution. 

“Fraternity” meant a new consciousness of human brother¬ 
hood. The revolutionists set out to make France a better 
place for every one to live in. This fraternal feel- „ „ . „ 

ing inspired all ranks and classes of the people. It 
led to a great outburst of patriotic and national sentiment, 
which enabled the French, single-handed, to withstand Europe 
in arms. 

The principles of 1789 were not confined to France. The 
revolutionary and Napoleonic soldiers passed from land to land, 
bringing in their train the overthrow of the Old The spirit 
Regime. The effect was profound in the Nether- of 1789 
lands, in western Germany, and in northern Italy, countries 
where the masses of the people had grievances and aspirations 
like those of the French. During the nineteenth century the 
revolutionary spirit spread to other European countries, re¬ 
sulting everywhere in a demand for the abolition of the estab¬ 
lished privileges of wealth, birth, and social position. Such 
has been the service of France as a liberator. 


139. Reconstruction and Reaction 

The close of the revolutionary and Napoleonic era found 
Europe in confusion. The French Revolution had destroyed 
the Old Regime in France, and Napoleon had congress 

given new rulers or new boundaries to almost every of Vienna, 

^ 1814 _ 1815 

Continental country. A great international con¬ 
gress now met at Vienna to rebuild the European state-system 
and remake the European map. The powers represented were 
Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia, Sweden, Portugal, 
Spain, and France. The congress formed a brilliant assemblage 
of emperors, kings, princes of every rank, and titled diplomats. 


490 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 

When the wheels of diplomacy had been well oiled by banquets, 
balls, and other festivities, the monarchs and their advisers 
undertook the reconstruction of Europe. 

The allied powers were opposed, naturally enough, to all 
the democratic or liberal sentiments which had been awakened 


in Europe since 1789. The French Revolution 
appeared to them as merely a revolt which had 
overturned the social order, destroyed property, 


The congress 
and 

democracy 


sacrificed countless human lives, and introduced confusion 
everywhere. Blind to the true significance of the demand for 
liberty and equality, they sought to bring back the Old Regime 
of absolutism, privilege, and divine right. Their ideal was 
Europe before 1789. 

The first business before the allied powers was the restoration 
of old dynasties. Spokesmen for the allies asserted the right of 
Restoration of European monarchs to govern their former sub- 
the dynasties jects, irrespective of the latter’s wishes or of the 
claims of the rulers whom Napoleon had set up. Accordingly, 
a brother of Louis XVI became king of France as Louis XVIII, 1 
and another Bourbon king, Ferdinand VII, went back to Spain. 
Still other “legitimate” princes recovered their thrones in 
Italy. Some of them governed without constitutions or parlia¬ 
ments, using their absolute power to get rid of every trace of 
the revolutionary era. The restoration of the dynasties spelled 
reaction. 

As we have already learned, the fraternal or patriotic feelings 
so deeply stirred during the revolutionary and Napoleonic era 
The congress P ut renewe d emphasis on the rights of nationalities, 
and Patriots in one country after another boldly de- 

nationalism c i arec i that no nation, however small or weak, 
should be governed by foreigners. Every nation, on the con¬ 
trary, ought to be free to choose its own form of government 
and manage its own affairs. To such “ submerged nationalities ” 
as the Belgians, Bohemians, Poles, and Magyars this principle 
held out the hope of independence; to the Italians and the Ger- 

1 The young son of Louis XVI (“Louis XVII”) is supposed to have died in a 
revolutionary prison in 1795. 


Reconstruction and Reaction 


491 


mans it held out the hope of unification. Like the “enlightened 
despots,” however, the allied rulers and diplomats willfully dis¬ 
regarded all national aspirations. They treated the European 
peoples as so many pawns in the game of diplomacy. 

In general, the territorial readjustments made at this time 
were intended to compensate the great powers for their exertions 
against Napoleon. Both Austria and Prussia in- Territorial 
creased their possessions, the one in Italy and readjustments 
the other in Germany. Russia also widened her boundaries 
by annexations on her western frontier. Great Britain, who 
did not desire Continental territories, received additional col¬ 
onies as a reward for her part in the overthrow of the French 
emperor. 

The rulers and diplomats did not make a permanent settlement 
of the affairs of Europe. They failed to satisfy either the demo¬ 
cratic or national aspirations of European peoples Work of the 
and so left many troublesome problems unsolved. Vienna 
The political history of the last century in Europe Congress 
is, in fact, largely concerned with the movements toward democ¬ 
racy and nationalism and the consequent changes of territory 
and government. Nevertheless, the rulers and diplomats 
deserve credit for real accomplishments. They reconciled the 
claims and desires of the chief states, or at least of the ruling 
classes. There were now five great European powers; Great 
Britain and France in the west; Austria and Prussia in the 
center; and Russia in the east. No one of them was strong 
enough to dominate the others. 

Austria, after the Congress of Vienna, consisted of more than 
a score of territories inhabited by Germans, Magyars, Slavs, 
Rumanians, and Italians. To keep them united Reactionary 
under a single scepter, the Hapsburgs deliberately Austria 
repressed all agitation for independence or self-government. 
The Hapsburgs felt it equally necessary to discourage every 
popular movement, which, starting in Italy or Germany, might 
spread like an infection to their own dominions. “My realm,” 
confessed an Austrian emperor, “is like a worm-eaten house; 
if a part of it is removed, one cannot tell how much will fall.” 


492 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 



Metternich 


Force of circumstances thus placed Austria at the forefront of 
the reaction against democracy. 

The spirit of reactionary Austria seemed incarnate in Prince 
Clemens Metternich. He belonged to an old and distinguished 
family from the Rhinelands, entered the diplo¬ 
matic service of Austria, and during the Napoleonic 
era rose to be the chief representative of the Hapsburg emperor 

at Paris. An aris¬ 
tocrat to his fin¬ 
ger-tips, polished, 
courtly, tactful, 
clever, this man 
soon became the 
real head of the 
Austrian govern¬ 
ment and the most 
influential diplo¬ 
mat in Europe. 
To the rule of Na¬ 
poleon succeeded 
the rule of Metter¬ 
nich. 

Metternich re¬ 
garded absolutism 

The Metter- and 
nich system divine 

right as the pillars 
of stable govern¬ 
ment. Democracy, 
he declared, could 
only “change daylight into darkest night.” All demands for 
constitutions, parliaments, and representative institutions must 
consequently be opposed to the uttermost. In order to stamp 
out the “disease of liberalism,” let spies and secret police be 
multiplied, press and pulpit kept under gag-laws, the universities 
sharply watched for dangerous teachings, and all agitators exiled, 
imprisoned, or executed. Such measures of repression seemed 


Metternich 

After a portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence. 







The Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 493 

quite feasible at a time when the majority of European peoples 
were ignorant peasants, far removed from public life. Met- 
ternich first set up his system in Austria and then by skillful 
diplomacy extended it to other parts of the Continent. 

The states whose coalitions overthrew Napoleon became in 
1815 the arbiters of Europe. Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, 
and Russia renewed their alliance, in order to Revolutions 
preserve the dynastic and territorial arrangements of 1820 
made by the Congress of Vienna. France under Louis XVIII 
was soon admitted into the circle of allied powers. One of the 
clauses of the treaty between them provided that they should 
hold congresses from time to time for the consideration of the 
measures “most salutary for the repose and prosperity of 
nations and for the peace of Europe.” Four such congresses 
were summoned by Metternich, whose diplomatic genius 
turned them into agencies of reaction. He even persuaded the 
sovereigns of Austria, Prussia, and Russia to sign a declaration 
by which they agreed to use their combined forces to put down 
any future outbreaks of the peoples against the monarchs. 
This meant the organization of a sort of international police 
body to keep order in Europe. It came into action after 1820, 
when popular uprisings occurred in Spain and Italy. They 
were speedily crushed, the Spanish insurrection by a French 
army and the Italian revolts by Austrian troops. Metternich 
felt well satisfied with his work. “I see the dawn of a better 
day,” he wrote. “Heaven seems to will it that the world shall 
not be lost.” 


140. The Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 

The first revolutionary movements in Italy and Spain were 
failures, but in France another revolution soon dealt an effective 
blow for freedom. It was provoked by the reac- The « j uly 
tionary rule of Charles X, who succeeded his Revolution” 
brother, Louis XVIII, on the throne. The revo- in France 
lution broke out at Paris in July, 1830. Workingmen and 
students raised barricades in the narrow streets and defied the 
government. After several days of fighting, the revolutionists 


494 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 


gained control of the capital. Charles X fled to England, and 
the old republican flag, the tricolor, was once more raised in 
France. Those who carried through the uprising wanted a 
republic, but they found little support among the liberal bour¬ 
geoisie. Men of this class feared that a republican France 
would soon be at war with monarchical Europe. Largely 



influenced by the aged Lafayette, the Republicans agreed to ac¬ 
cept another king, in the person of Louis Philippe, who belonged 
to the younger branch of the Bourbon family. He took the 
crown now offered to him, at the same time promising to respect 
the constitution and the liberties of Frenchmen. 

The events in France created a sensation throughout Europe. 

The reactionaries were horrified at the sudden out¬ 
burst of a revolutionary spirit which for fifteen 
years they had endeavored to suppress; the liber¬ 
als were encouraged to renewed agitation for self-government 


Effect of 
the “ July 
Revolution 
















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495 













































































































































































































































































496 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 


and national rights. Widespread disturbances in the Nether¬ 
lands, Poland, Italy, and Germany compelled Metternich to 
abandon all thought of intervening to restore Charles X in 
France. 

The Congress of Vienna, so disregardful of national feeling, 
had united the Belgians and Dutch into one state under a Dutch 
Revolution king. This arbitrary union of the two peoples 
in Belgium l e d t 0 acu te friction between them. Encouraged 
by the success of the “July Revolution” in France, Belgian 
patriots raised an insurrection in Brussels. It soon spread to 
the provinces and led to a demand for complete separation from 
Holland. The French government under Louis Philippe natu¬ 
rally favored this course, and Great Britain, a champion of 
small nationalities, also gave it her approval. The three eastern 
powers would gladly have stepped in to prevent such a breach 
of the Vienna settlements, but Austria and Russia had disorders 
of their own to quell, and Prussia did not dare, single-handed, 
to take action which might bring her into collision with France. 
The revolution succeeded, in consequence, and Belgium became 
an independent kingdom with a liberal constitution. 

The attempts of other “submerged nationalities” to secure 
freedom at this time were not successful. The Poles, whose 

territory had been partitioned in the eighteenth 
Failure of "k . f , . . , & 

other revo- century between their greedy neighbors, attempted 

lutionary a revolt, but it was put down by Russian troops, 
movements . . 

Metternich s Austrian soldiers quickly repressed 
the insurrectionary movement which started again in Italy. 
Autocracy thus remained in the saddle throughout the greater 
part of Europe, in spite of the setbacks which it had met in 
France and Belgium. 

The next eighteen years of European history witnessed no 
conspicuous triumphs for either democracy or nationalism on 
From 1830 "the Continent. Italy and Germany remained as 
to 1848 disunited as ever. Bohemia and Hungary con¬ 

tinued to be subject to the Hapsburgs, and Poland, to the 
Romanovs. Metternich, though growing old and weary, still 
kept his power at Vienna. The new rulers who came to the 


The Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 


497 


throne at this time were no less autocratic than their predeces¬ 
sors. But beneath the surface discontent and unrest intensified, 
becoming all the stronger because so sternly repressed by the 
governments. Journalists, lawyers, professors, and other liberal- 
minded men, who might have been mere reformers, adopted 
radical and even revolutionary views and sought to impress 
them upon the working classes of the cities, the hungry prole¬ 
tariat who wanted freedom and who wanted bread. From 
time to time mutterings of the coming storm were heard; it 
burst in France. 



Louis Philippe posed as a thorough democrat. He liked to 
be called the “Citizen King,” walked the streets of Paris un¬ 
attended, sent his sons to the public schools, and 
opened the royal palace to all who wished to come ary Revolu- 
and shake hands with the head of the State. It p°^ n ” e in 
soon became clear, however, that under an exterior 
of republican simplicity Louis Philippe had all the Bourbon itch¬ 
ing for personal power. Few Frenchmen, in consequence, sup¬ 
ported their sovereign. Both the Legitimists, as the adherents 
of the exiled Charles X were called, and the Bonapartists, who 
wished to restore the Napoleonic dynasty, cordially hated him. 
The Republicans, who had brought about the “July Revolution” 
and felt themselves cheated by its outcome, held him in even 
greater detestation. The growing discontent against the 
monarchy produced a number of plots and insurrections, which 
Louis Philippe met with the time-honored policy of repression. 
All societies were required to submit their proceedings to the 
government for approval. Editors of outspoken newspapers 


498 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 


were jailed, fined, or banished. Criticism or caricature of the 
king in any form was forbidden. Louis Philippe, like his pred¬ 
ecessor, seemed quite determined that his throne should not be 
“an empty armchair.” Affairs did not become critical in Paris 
until 1848. On Washington’s birthday of that year riots broke 
out in Paris. Workingmen armed themselves, threw up barri¬ 
cades, and raised the ominous cry, “Long live the republic.” 
Louis Philippe, losing heart and fearing to lose head as well, 
soon abdicated the throne and as plain “Mr. Smith” sought an 
asylum in England. 

His abdication and flight did not save the monarchy. The 
revolutionists in Paris proclaimed a republic, and the French 
Second people outside the capital city supported them 

French in this action. The constitution of the second 

Republic French Republic formed a thoroughly liberal 

document. It guaranteed complete freedom of speech and of 
assembly, prohibited capital punishment for political offenses, 
and abolished all titles of nobility. There was to be a responsi¬ 
ble ministry and a president chosen by universal suffrage. This 
extension of the suffrage to include the masses marks an epoch 
in the history of democracy. The revolutions of 1789 and 1830 
destroyed absolute monarchy and privileged aristocracy in 
France; the revolution of 1848 overthrew middle-class govern¬ 
ment and established political equality. 

The voters elected to the presidency Louis Napoleon, a 
nephew of the great emperor and the eldest representative of 
his family. During the reactionary rule of the 
Bourbons and the dull, bourgeois monarchy of 
Louis Philippe, the legend of a Napoleon (§ 137) 
who was at once a democrat, a soldier, and a 
revolutionary hero, had grown apace. The stories of every 
peasant’s fireside, the pictures on every cottage wall, kept his 
memory green. To the mass of the French people the name 
Napoleon stood for prosperity at home and glory abroad; and 
their votes now swept his nephew into office. 

France had once more lighted the revolutionary torch, and 
this time eager hands took it up and carried it throughout the 


Louis 
Napoleon, 
president 
of France 


Unification of Italy 


499 


Continent. Within a few months half of the monarchs of 
Europe were either deposed or forced to concede liberal reforms. 
No less than fifteen separate revolts marked the 

0 _ ™ . Effect of 

year 1848. these movements for democracy the“Febru- 

and nationalism were sternly put down. A re- a . ry R evolu - 

bellion of the Czechs (Bohemians) collapsed under 

the pressure of Austrian bayonets. The Magyars (Hungarians) 

set up an independent republic, with the patriot Kossuth as 



Medal in Honor of Kossuth 

Kossuth visited the United States in 1851, to secure American intervention in behalf 
of Hungary. The medal reproduced was struck off at this time. 


president, but that too collapsed when the Austrian emperor, 
Francis Joseph I, called in the aid of his brother-monarch and 
brother-reactionary, the tsar of Russia. Revolutionary out¬ 
breaks in the German states and in Italy likewise proved 
fruitless, and their leaders perished on the gallows or before 
a firing squad. Discouraged by these failures, the European 
peoples now abandoned to some extent the agitation for 
democratic reforms. They turned, instead, to the task of 
nation building. 


141. Unification of Italy 


It might seem from a glance at the map as if Italy, with the 
Mediterranean on three sides and the Alps on the Ge0 g ra phy 
fourth, was specially intended by nature to be the and Italian 
seat of a unified nation. But the map is decep- umty 
tive. The number, position, and comparative lowness of the 




500 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 


Alpine passes combine to make Italy fairly accessible from the 
north and northwest; from before the dawn of history these 
passes, together with the river valleys which approach them, 
have facilitated the entrance of invading peoples. The extreme 
length of the peninsula in proportion to its breadth, its division 
into two unequal parts by the Apennines, and the separateness 
of the Po basin from the rest of the country were also unfavor¬ 
able to Italian unity. 

Historical circumstances have been even more unfavorable. 
The foreign peoples who established themselves in Italy during 
History and the Middle Ages divided the peninsula into small, 
Italian unity we ak, and mutually jealous states. In later times 
Spaniards, French, and Austrians annexed part of the country 
and governed much of the remainder through its petty princes. 
The popes also worked throughout the medieval and modern 
period to keep Italy fragmentary. They realized that unifica¬ 
tion meant the extinction of the States of the Church, or at 
least papal dependence on the secular power, and they felt that 
this would interfere with the impartiality which the head of the 
Church ought to exercise toward Roman Catholics in all lands. 
Furthermore, the Italians themselves lacked national ideals and 
preserved from antiquity the tradition of separate city-commu¬ 
nities, ruled, it may be, by despots or else self-governing, but in 
any case independent. Such were medieval Genoa, Pisa, Milan, 
Florence, and Venice. 

Italian history, for several centuries before the outbreak of the 
French Revolution, is almost a blank. The glories of Renais- 
itaiy before sance art, literature, and scholarship were now but 
the French a memory. Centuries of misrule and civil strife 
Revolution crus hed the creative energies of the people, while 
their material welfare steadily declined after the discovery of 
America and the Cape route to the Indies shifted trade centers 
from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. Divided, dependent, 
impoverished, Italy had indeed fallen on evil days. 

The Italians describe their national movement as a Risorgi- 
mento, a “resurrection” of a people once the most civilized and 
prosperous in Europe. It dates from the shock of the French 


Unification of Italy 501 

Revolution. The armies of revolutionary France drove out 
the Austrians, set up republics in the northern part of the 
peninsula, and swept away the abuses of the Old i ta i y during 
Regime. Italy began to rouse herself from her long the revoiu- 
torpor and to hope for unity and freedom. Na- Napoleonic 
poleon Bonaparte, himself an Italian by birth, era 
continued the unifying work of the French revolutionists. All 
Italy, except the islands of Sardinia and Sicily, was either 
annexed to France or 
made dependent on 
France. Throughout the 
country the French em¬ 
peror introduced personal 
freedom, religious tolera¬ 
tion, equality before the 
law, and the even justice 
of the Code Napoleon. 

The year 1815 was one 
of cruel disappointment 
to patriotic Italy 

Italians, who between 

. 1 • 1815-1848 

saw their 

country again dismem¬ 
bered, subject to Austria, 
and under reactionary princes. Men who had once experienced 
Napoleon’s enlightened rule would not submit to this restoration of 
the Old Regime. The great mass of the bourgeoisie, many of the 
nobles, and some of the better educated artisans now began to 
work for the overthrow of Austrian power in the peninsula and 
for the formation of a constitutional government in the various 
states. Unable to agitate publicly, these Italians of necessity 
resorted to underground methods. Various secret societies 
sprang up and started the first unsuccessful revolutions 
against Austria (§ 139). Another revolutionary society, Young 
Italy, was organized by the patriot Mazzini. Its motto was, 
“God and the people” ; its purpose, the creation of a republic. 
Many patriotic men who did not favor republican principles 



Mazzini 


After a portrait by Madame Venturi about 1847. 


502 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 


hoped to form a federation of the Italian states under the presi¬ 
dency of the pope. Many more pinned their faith to a constitu¬ 
tional monarchy under the Sardinian king. 



The kingdom of Sardinia included not only the island of that 
name, but also Savoy and Piedmont on the mainland. 1 At the 
Sardinia middle of the nineteenth century Sardinia ranked 
and Italian as the leading state in Italy. It was, moreover, 
the only Italian state not controlled by Austria 
since 1815, and in 1848-1849 it had warred bravely, though 

1 See the map on this page. 






































































Unification of Italy 


503 


unsuccessfully, against that foreign power. After the pope had 
shown himself unwilling to head the national movement, and 
after Mazzini had failed in an attempt to set up a republic, the 
eyes of Italian patriots turned more and more to the king of 
Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel II, as the most promising leader 
in the struggle for independence. 

Fortunately for Italy, Victor Emmanuel II had a great 
minister in the Piedmontese noble, Count Cavour. His plain, 
square face, fringed with a ragged beard, his half- ^ ^ 
closed eyes that blinked through steel-bowed spec¬ 
tacles, and his short, burly figure did not suggest the statesman. 
Cavour, however, was finely educated and widely traveled. 
He knew England well, admired the English system of parlia¬ 
mentary government, and felt a corresponding hatred of abso¬ 
lutist principles. Unlike the poetical and speculative Mazzini, 
Cavour had all the patience, caution, and mastery of details 
essential for successful leadership. 

Cavour, faithfully supported by Victor Emmanuel II, bent 
every effort to make Sardinia a strong and liberal state: strong 
enough to cope with Austria, liberal enough to Sardinia 
attract to herself all the other states of Italy. At under Cavour 
the same time, he managed foreign affairs most skillfully and 
made an alliance with Louis Napoleon, who in 1852 had become 
emperor of France under the title of Napoleon III. The French 
emperor seems to have felt a genuine sympathy for Italy; he 
liked to consider himself the champion of oppressed nationali¬ 
ties ; and he had no hesitation about tearing up the treaties of 
1815, treaties humiliating to his dynasty and to France. In 
return for the duchy of Savoy and the port of Nice, Napoleon III 
now promised an army to help expel the Austrians from Italy. 

The bargain once struck, Cavour had next to provoke the 
Austrian government into a declaration of war. It was essential 
that Austria be made to appear the aggressor in Q uarre i be - 
the eyes of Europe. Cavour’s agents secretly tween Austria 
stirred up disturbances in Lombardy and Venetia. and Sardmia 
Francis Joseph I, the Hapsburg emperor, in an outburst of 
reckless fury, finally sent an ultimatum to Sardinia, offering the 


504 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 


dinian War, 
1859 


choice between disarmament or instant war. Cavour joyfully 
accepted the latter. “The die is cast,” he exclaimed, “and 
we have made history.” 

The fighting which followed lasted only a few months. Sar¬ 
dinia and France carried everything before them. The Aus- 
Austro-Sar- trians were driven out of Lombardy and might 
have been driven out of Venetia as well, had not 
Napoleon III decided to end his Italian venture. 
He had never contemplated the unification of all Italy, but the 
outburst of national feeling which accompanied the war prom¬ 
ised to bring this about and thus create a strong national 
state as a near neighbor of France. Victor Emmanuel II and 
Cavour, left in the lurch by their ally, were obliged to make 
peace with the Hapsburg ruler. Lombardy was ceded to 
Sardinia, but Venetia remained Austrian. However, the first 
step in Italian unification had been taken. 

The people of central Italy, unaided, took the second step in 
unification. Tuscany and several other small states expelled 
Central their ru l ers an d declared for annexation to Sar- 

itaiy annexed, dinia. Napoleon III agreed to this action, after 
Cavour handed over to him both Savoy and Nice, 
just as if the French ruler had carried out the original agree¬ 
ment and had freed Italy “from the Alps to the Adriatic.” 

The third step in unification was taken by Giuseppe Garibaldi, 
a sailor from Nice, a soldier of liberty, and a picturesque, heroic 
figure. At the age of twenty-four Garibaldi 
joined Young Italy, took part in an insurrection, 
for which he was condemned to death, escaped to South 
America, and fought there many years for the freedom of the 
Portuguese and Spanish colonies. Returning to Italy during 
the uprising of 1848, he won renown in the defense of Mazzini’s 
Roman Republic. The collapse of the revolutionary movement 
made him once more a fugitive; he lived for some time in New 
York; later became the skipper of a Peruvian ship; and finally 
settled down as a farmer on a little Italian island. The events 
of 1859 called him from retirement, and he took part effectively 
in the campaign against Austria. 


Garibaldi 


505 


Unification of Italy 

When the Sicilians threw off Bourbon rule in i860, Garibaldi 
went to their aid with one thousand red-shirted volunteers. It 
seemed — it was — a foolhardy expedition, but to The Two 
Garibaldi and his “Red Shirts” all things were Sicilies an- 
possible. Within a month they had conquered the nexed ’ 1860 
entire island of Sicily. Thence they crossed to the mainland 
and soon entered Naples in triumph. The Two Sicilies voted for 
annexation to Sar¬ 
dinia. Garibaldi then 
handed over his con¬ 
quests to Victor Em¬ 
manuel II, and the 
two liberators rode 
through the streets of 
Naples side by side, 
amid the applause of 
the people. 

The diplomacy of 
Cavour, the interven- 
t i O n of Kingdom 

Napoleon of Ital y 
III, Garibaldi’s sword, 
and the popular will 
thus united the larger 
part of Italy within 
two years. A national 
parliament met in 
i860 and conferred the 
crown upon Victor Emmanuel II. The new kingdom was com¬ 
pleted a few years later, when the Italians annexed Venetia and 
also occupied Rome, which had been previously held by the 
pope. 1 In 1871 the city of the Seven Hills, once the capital of 
imperial Rome, became the capital of the kingdom of Italy. 

1 The temporal power of the Papacy, dating back to the Middle Ages (§83), 
thus disappeared. The States of the Church were extinguished, and the papal 
territory was limited to the Vatican and Lateran palaces in Rome. The popes 
have never accepted these arrangements, and since 1871 no one of them has ever 
set foot outside the Vatican and St. Peter’s Church. 



“The Right Leg in the Boot at Last” 

A cartoon which appeared in the English journal Punch 
for November 17, i860. 





The Vatican, Rome 

The palace of the Vatican, adjoining St. Peter’s, became the fixed residence of the popes after their return from Avignon in 1377. Since the fifteenth century suc¬ 
cessive popes have reconstructed the original building on a magnificent scale. It contains thousands of rooms, some of which are used as art galleries, museums, and 
libraries. The palace gardens are extensive and beautiful. 








































































































































































































































Unification of Germany 507 

Even these acquisitions did not quite round out the Italian 
kingdom. There was still an Italia Irredenta , an “Unredeemed 
Italy.” The district about Trent in the Alps “ unre- 
(the Trentino) and the district about Trieste at the deemed Italy” 
head of the Adriatic, remained under Austrian rule. The desire 
to recover these provinces was one of the reasons which led 
Italy to take the side of the Allies in the World War. 

142. Unification of Germany 

The political unification of Germany formed another striking 
triumph for nationalism, even though it did not involve, as in 
the case of Italy, the removal of a foreign yoke. The German 
National unity could not be won as long as so states 
many kingdoms, duchies, principalities, and free cities remained 
on German soil. These states — the heritage of feudalism — 
had long been practically independent. Each made its own 
laws, held its own court, conducted its own diplomacy, and had 
its own army, tariff, and coinage. Only a map or a series of 
maps on a large scale can do justice to the German “crazy-quilt.” 
Here was a country, large, populous, and wealthy, which lacked 
a national government, such as had existed in England, France, 
Spain, and even Russia for centuries. 

It is one of the ironies of history that Germany owes to 
Napoleon Bonaparte the first measures which made possible 
her later unification. He secured for France the Napoleon 
German lands west of the Rhine, thus dispossess- and tim¬ 
ing nearly a hundred princes of their territories. ficatlon 
He afterward reorganized much of Germany east of the Rhine, 
with the idea of setting up a few large states as a barrier be¬ 
tween France on the one side and Austria and Prussia on the 
other. This work survived the emperor’s downfall. Germany 
in 1815 included only thirty-eight independent states, as com¬ 
pared with more than three hundred in 1789. 

The impulse to German nationalism also came from Napo¬ 
leon. By sweeping away so many small states he not only 
simplified the political map, but also forced Germans to abate 


508 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 


somewhat their jealousies and hatreds and to regard one 
another as countrymen. Their struggle against Napoleon 
Napoleon banded them together, at least for the moment, 
and in behalf of a common cause. Prussians, Saxons, 

nationalism anc [ Bavarians rose i n arms, no t to seek conquests, 
but to free themselves from a foreign yoke. “ I have only one 
fatherland,” wrote the patriot Stein, “that is called Germany.” 
The famous war song, What is the German Fatherland? ex¬ 
pressed the same patriotic spirit. 1 

The hopes of German nationalists were dashed by the Con¬ 
gress of Vienna. The Germanic Confederation, which now 
Germany replaced the Holy Roman Empire, was not, prop- 
after 1815 erly speaking, a union of states, but rather of sov¬ 
ereigns : six kings, six grand dukes, nine dukes, eleven princes, 
and four free cities, together with the king of the Netherlands 
(for Luxemburg) and the king of Denmark (for Holstein). 
Each member of the Confederation continued to be independent 
except for foreign affairs, which a Diet, or Parliament, controlled. 
Germany, while still politically divided, became economically 
one. The tariff duties levied by each member of the Confedera¬ 
tion against the goods of every other member greatly hampered 
commerce and industry. To meet this difficulty Prussia formed 
a Zollverein (Customs Union), which finally included all the 
states except Austria. Complete free trade prevailed between 
its members, while high protective duties shut out foreign 
competition. The Zollverein showed the German people some 
of the advantages of union and encouraged them to look to 
Prussia for its attainment. 

The Prussian kingdom seemed to be, indeed, the natural center 
of unity. Her population, except the Poles, was entirely Ger- 
Prussia and man; she had led Germany in the heroic struggle 
German unity against Napoleon; and since 1850 she had pos¬ 
sessed a constitution, which, if not democratic, at least estab¬ 
lished some measure of parliamentary government. The in¬ 
terests of Austria, on the contrary, were divided between her 
German and numerous non-German peoples, and the Austrian 

1 Die Wacht am Rhein, Germany’s national anthem, was not composed until 1840. 







































































Unification of Germany 


509 


government was reaction personified. Neither nationalists 
nor democrats could expect help from the Hapsburgs. As for 
the central and southern states — Saxony, Bavaria, Wiirttem- 
berg, Baden, Hanover, and the rest — none were large enough 
or strong enough to attempt the task of unification. But 
if the Hohenzollerns undertook it, how would they carry it 
through? Would they serve Germany by merging Prussia in 
a German nation, as Sardinia had been merged in Italy, or 
would they rule Germany? Answers to these questions were 
soon forthcoming. 

The movement for German unity was guided and carried 
through to success by the famous statesman, Otto von Bismarck. 
A member of the Prussian landed aristocracy, well k 

educated, and trained in statecraft by service as 
ambassador at foreign courts, he became in 1862 the chief 
minister of the king of Prussia, William I, who had mounted the 
throne in the previous year. Bismarck was convinced that 
Germany could be unified only by force, or, as he phrased it, 
by “blood and iron.” This meant the building up in Prussia 
of a great war machine. Accordingly, Bismarck and his military 
associates, including the able general Moltke, bent every effort 
to strengthen the Prussian army and make it, as in the days 
of Frederick the Great (§ 109), the most formidable army in 
Europe. How well he succeeded in this work events soon 
showed. 

To place Prussia at the head of Germany meant a conflict with 
Austria, for that power would never willingly surrender her 
leading place in the Germanic Confederation. The Austro _ 
war with Austria, which Bismarck anticipated and Prussian 
planned for, broke out in 1866. Thanks to the War ’ 1866 
careful organization of the Prussian army and to Moltke’s 
brilliant strategy, it turned out to be a “Seven Weeks’ War.” 
The Austrians met a crushing defeat, and Francis Joseph I, 
the Austrian emperor, had to sue for peace. Bismarck did not 
humble Austria by imposing too severe terms, but he required 
her to consent to a dissolution of the Germanic Confederation 
and to interfere no longer in German affairs. 


5io Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 


Bismarck had now a free hand in Germany. He began by 
annexing several small German states, in order to bring together 
North Ger- scat tered Prussian dominions. All the remain- 

man Confed- ing states north of the river Main were then re¬ 
lation, 1867 q U j rec [ to en t er a North German Confederation 
controlled by Prussia. The four states south of the Main, 
which had fought on the side of Austria, did not enter the new 



confederation. They secretly agreed, however, to place their 
armies at the disposal of Prussia in event of a conflict with 
France. 

For Bismarck a Franco-German War “lay in the logic of 
history.” He believed it necessary, for joint action by the 
Franco- North German and South German states against a 

German War, common foe would quicken national sentiment and 

1870—1871 

complete the work of unification under Prussia. 
He also believed it inevitable, in view of the traditional French 
policy of keeping Germany disunited in order to have a weak 
neighbor across the Rhine. Napoleon III, on his side, had now 
begun to regret his neutrality in the Austro-Prussian War 








Unification of Germany 



and to realize that if German unity was to be prevented France 
must draw the sword. He, too, was ready for a struggle which 
he believed would satisfy French opinion and, if victorious, 
would strengthen his dynasty. But the struggle did not end 
victoriously for the French. 

Their armies were overcome in 
one battle after another; Na¬ 
poleon III himself was made a 
prisoner; 1 and Paris after a 
four months’ siege had to capit¬ 
ulate. The Franco-German 
War now ended. 

Bismarck’s harsh treat¬ 
ment of France contrasts 
sharply with his The “ Lost 
previous modera- Provinces ” 
tion toward Austria. France 
had to pay an indemnity of 
one billion dollars within three 
years and to support a German 
army of occupation until this 
sum was forthcoming. She 
also ceded to Germany Alsace 
and a large part of Lorraine. 

Bismarck took these provinces 


“V.® Victis!” 

Woe to the vanquished! ” A cartoon by 


ostensibly to regain what had Sir John Tenniel which appeared in the 
. , ., English journal Punch for March n, 1871. 

once been German territory William i, in the garb of an ancient Germanic 

(§106), but really because of chieftain, rides his charger over the body of 
, . . / T prostrate France. The Crown Prince, Bis- 

their economic resources (Lor- marc ] £) an( j other leaders appear in the back- 

raine is rich in coal and iron) ground. 

and their value as a barrier 

against future French attack. France could never reconcile her¬ 
self to the loss of the two provinces; after 1871 she always 
hoped to win them back. The majority of the inhabitants 
themselves continued to be French in language and feeling, 

1 An event which led immediately to the proclamation of the third French Re¬ 
public in 1870. 







5i2 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 


despite German schools, German military training, and a heavy 
German immigration. Alsace and Lorraine thus became an¬ 
other open sore on the face of Europe. More than anything 
else, their annexation helped to unsettle the peace of the world 
for nearly half a century. 

United Germany now came into existence. The four South 
The German German states yielded to the national sentiment 
Empire aroused by the war and agreed with Prussia to 

enter the North German Confederation, rechristened the 
German Empire. On January 18, 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors 
at Versailles, William I took the title of German Emperor. 


143. Political Democracy in Great Britain 

The Puritan Revolution and the “Glorious Revolution” 
overthrew absolutism in Great Britain and set up a constitu- 
Undemocratic tional monarchy limited by Parliament. Never- 
Great Britain theless, Great Britain was still an undemocratic 
country. The House of Lords, composed of nobles and bishops 
who sat by hereditary right or by royal appointment, continued 
to be a stronghold of aristocracy. Even the House of Commons, 
the more popular branch of Parliament, represented only a 
fraction of the British people. 

According to the representative system which had been 
fixed in medieval times, each of the counties (shires) and most 
The ^ of the towns (boroughs) of Great Britain and 

formed Ireland had two members in the House of Com- 

Commons mons. Representation, however, bore no relation 
to the size of the population in either case : a large 
county and a small county, a large town and a small town, sent 
the same number of representatives. Some flourishing places, 
such as Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, and Sheffield, which 
had grown up since the Middle Ages, were without representa¬ 
tion. Other places — the so-called “rotten” boroughs — con¬ 
tinued to enjoy representation long after they had so decayed 
that nothing remained of them but a single house, a green 
mound, a park, or a ruined wall. The electoral system was 


Political Democracy in Great Britain 513 


equally out of date. Only landowners could vote in the coun¬ 
ties, while in many of the boroughs a handful of well-to-do 
people alone exercised the franchise. Not more than five per 
cent of all the adult males in Great Britain had the right to 



3 Great Britain 



4 Ireland 



Great Britain 
Ireland 


The Union Jack 

The Act of Union with Scotland (1707) required that England and Scotland should have 
one flag made of the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew combined. After the union with 
Ireland (1801) the cross of St. Patrick was incorporated in the flag. The name “ Jack ” 
comes from the French Jacques, referring to James I, the first sovereign of Great Britain. 


vote. There were even some “pocket” boroughs, for which a 
rich man, generally a nobleman, had acquired the privilege of 
naming the representatives. 

Efforts to improve these conditions began in the eighteenth 
century, but for a long time accomplished nothing. Sober 








































514 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 


people, alarmed by the events in France, coupled parliamentary 
reform with revolutionary designs against the government. 
Agitation for After i8i 5 > however, the Reign of Terror and 
parliamentary Napoleon Bonaparte were no longer bogeys; and 
reform public opinion grew steadily more hostile to a 

system of representation which excluded so many educated, 
prosperous members of the middle class from political power. 



Canvassing tor Votes 


One of Hogarth’s Election Prints, made in 1757. The scene is laid before an inn. The 
landlord in the middle foreground is seen contending with an officer of the Crown for the 
vote of a newly arrived farmer, who slyly takes bribes from both. 


The agitation for reform found its chief supporters in the Whig 
Party, which included many great lords, most of the bishops 
and town clergy, and the merchants, shopkeepers, and other 
members of the middle class. It was opposed by the Tory 
Party, whose strength lay in the landed gentry and rural clergy. 

The events which followed cast much light on British methods 
of government. The Reform Bill introduced by Earl Grey, 
the Whig prime minister, failed to pass the House of Commons. 








Political Democracy in Great Britain 515 

Parliament was then dissolved, in order to test the sentiment 
of the country by means of a general election. “The bill, the 
whole bill, and nothing but the bill,” cried the Passage 0 f 
reforming Whigs. They triumphed, and another the Reform 
Reform Bill passed the new House of Commons Act 
by a large majority. The House of Lords, staunchly Tory, threw 
it out. During the next session a third bill was put through 
the Commons. The Lords insisted upon amendments which the 
ministry would not accept. Meanwhile, popular excitement 
rose to fever pitch, and in one mass meeting after another the 
Lords were denounced as a corrupt and selfish oligarchy. Earl 
Grey advised the king 1 to create enough Whig peers to carry 
the measure in the upper chamber. The king refused to do so; 
the premier and his associates resigned; and the duke of Wel¬ 
lington tried without success to form another Tory ministry. 
Earl Grey then resumed office, having secured the royal prom¬ 
ise to create the necessary peers. This extreme step was not 
taken, however, for the mere threat of it brought the Lords 
to terms. In 1832 the long-debated bill quietly became law. 

The Reform Act achieved two results. It suppressed most 
of the “rotten” and “pocket” boroughs, thus setting free a 
large number of seats in the House of Commons p rovisions of 
for distribution among towns and counties which the Reform 
were either unrepresented or insufficiently repre- Act 
sen ted. It also gave the franchise to many persons who owned 
or rented buildings in the towns or who rented land in the 
country. Workingmen and agricultural laborers — the majority 
of the population — still remained without a vote. 

The Reform Act brought about a great change in British 
politics. The revolution of 1688-1689 had transferred the 
chief power from the sovereign to the upper class, Advent of the 
or landed aristocracy (§ hi). The parliamentary middle class 
revolution of 1832 shifted the balance to the middle class of 
merchants, manufacturers, and professional men — correspond¬ 
ing to the Continental bourgeoisie. Henceforth for many years 
it continued to rule Great Britain. 

1 William IV (1830-1837), a brother of George IV. 


516 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 



Reform 

versus 

revolution 


The events of 1832 have another meaning as well. They 
proved that the Tory aristocracy, entrenched in the House of 
Lords, could not permanently defy the popular 
will, that “it was impossible for the whisper of a 
faction to prevail against the voice of a nation.” 
The Lords yielded, however ungraciously, to public opinion. 
Their action meant that for the future Great Britain would 

progress by peaceful, orderly 
reform, rather than by rev¬ 
olution. That country is 
the only considerable state 
in Europe which during the 
past century has not had 
a revolutionary change of 
government. 

The failure of Parliament 
to enfranchise the masses 
produced much 
popular dis¬ 
content dur¬ 
ing the earlier 
years of Queen Victoria’s 1 
reign. The agitation for a 
more democratic Great Brit¬ 
ain owed much to the out¬ 
come of the American Civil 
War, which was regarded as 
a triumph for democracy. It began to seem anomalous that 
British workingmen should be denied the vote about to be 
granted former negro slaves in the United States. Finally, the 
British statesman Disraeli, leader of the Tory, or Conservative 
Party, secured the passage of a second measure for parliamentary 
reform. This enfranchised workingmen in the cities, at one 
stroke almost doubling the electorate. Gladstone, the Liberal 
leader and Disraeli’s great antagonist, carried democratic reform 


Extension of 
the suffrage, 
1867, 1884, 
and 1918 


Gladstone 

After a portrait by Sir J. E. Millais, Bart.; at 
Christ Church College, Oxford. 


1 Victoria (1837-igoi), was the niece of George IV and William IV. See the 
genealogical table on page 386. 










Political Democracy in Great Britain 517 


still further by the passage of a measure giving the vote to 
agricultural laborers. Most Conservatives and many Liberals 
thought it dangerous to go to such lengths. But Gladstone 
answered, “ I take my stand upon the broad principle that the 
enfranchisement of capable citizens, be they few or be they 
many — and if they be many so much the better — is an addi¬ 
tion to the strength of the state.” Great Britain henceforth 
had universal manhood suffrage. Woman suffrage was granted 
only a few years ago, at the close of the World War. 



After almost a century of gradual reform Great Britain has 
thus definitely abandoned the old theory, rooted in feudal con¬ 
ceptions, of the franchise as a privilege attached Democratic 
to the ownership of property, especially land. Great Bntain 
Voting henceforth becomes a right to be enjoyed by every citizen, 
whether man or woman. A general election for members of 
Parliament is now an appeal to a responsible people, and the 
will of the majority of the people must be carried out by Parlia¬ 
ment. Politically, Great Britain ranks among the most demo¬ 
cratic of modern countries. 











518 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 


144. Government of Great Britain 


The Crown 


The written constitution of Great Britain consists, first, of 
royal charters, second, of parliamentary statutes, third, of the 
The British Common Law as expressed in court decisions, and 
constitution fourth, of international treaties. Besides such 
documents, it includes a large mass of customs and precedents, 
which, though unwritten, are none the less binding on Crown 
and Parliament. The British constitution, easily modified 
and ever growing with the increase of law and legislation, is a 
“flexible” constitution, in contrast to that of the United States, 
which is of the “rigid” type (§123). 

As far as appearances go, the sovereign of Great Britain is a 
divine-right monarch. Coins and proclamations still recite 
that he rules “by the grace of God” (dei gratia ), 
and the opening words of the British national an¬ 
them are, “God Save our Lord and King.” He is also, as far 
as appearances go, an absolute monarch. Whatever the govern¬ 
ment does, from the arrest of a criminal to the declaration of a 
war, is done in his name. But every one knows that the British 
sovereign now acts only by and with the advice of his responsible 
ministers. He reigns, but he does not rule. 

This figurehead king occupies, nevertheless, a useful place in 
the British governmental system. As the representative of the 
Position of nation, he often exercises a restraining, moderating 
the Crown influence upon public affairs, especially through 
his consultations with politicians of both parties. He himself 
stands above party. A common loyalty to the Crown, as an 
ancient, dignified, and permanent institution, also helps to 
bind together Canada, Australia, and the other self-governing 
commonwealths of the British Empire. It is a symbol of impe¬ 
rial unity such as could scarcely be afforded by an elective and 
constantly changing presidency. The rising tide of republican¬ 
ism has thus failed to affect the British monarchy, and the per¬ 
sonal popularity of Queen Victoria, Edward VII, and George V 
seems to have established it more solidly than a century ago in 
the esteem of their subjects. 



The town of Windsor lies on the west bank of the Thames, about twenty-one miles from London. Its famous castle has been the chief residence of English 
sovereigns from the time of William the Conqueror. The massive round tower, which forms the most conspicuous feature of the castle, was built by Henry 
III about 1272, but Edward III wholly reconstructed it about 1344- The state apartments of the castle include the throne room, a guard room with medieval 
armor, a reception room adorned with tapestries, picture galleries, and the royal library. 



















































































520 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 


Parliament 


British legal theory makes Parliament consist of the Crown, 
the House of Lords, and the House of Commons. The share 
of the Crown is now limited to expressing assent to 
a bill after its passage by the Commons and the 
Lords. Such assent the king must give. The royal veto has 
not been expressly taken away, but Queen Anne in 1707 was 
the last sovereign to exercise this former privilege. Nor may 
the courts set aside an act of Parliament as unconstitutional, for 
every statute is a part of the constitution. An American 
student, accustomed to the water-tight division of powers be¬ 
tween President, Congress, and the federal courts, finds it hard 
to appreciate the supreme authority of the British Parliament. 
The only check upon it is the political good sense of the British 
people. 

The House of Lords contains upwards of seven hundred 
members: the Lords Spiritual (archbishops and bishops) and 
House the Lords Temporal (princes of the royal blood, 

of Lords all English peers, and a certain number of Scotch 

and Irish peers). There are also several law lords, who, with the 
Lord Chancellor, form the highest court of appeal for certain 
cases. The Lord Chancellor presides over the House of Lords. 
The power to create new peers belongs to the Crown, but 
usually the prime minister decides who shall be selected for this 
honor. The House of Lords was the dominant chamber until 
the passage of the Reform Act of 1832. Since then the Lords 
have not ventured to oppose the Commons on any measure 
clearly supported by a majority of the people. 

The House of Commons consists of six hundred and fifteen 
members, chosen by universal suffrage from equal electoral 
House districts. Commoners serve for five years, which 

of Commons j s maximum life of a single Parliament. This 
period is shortened whenever the Crown, on the advice of its 
ministers, dissolves the House of Commons and orders a new 
general election. Voting does not take place on one day 
throughout the country; it may extend over as much as two 
weeks. Nor need a candidate be a resident of the district 
which he proposes to represent. Defeat in one constituency, 


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CHOIR OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY 

The church formerly attached to the Benedictine abbey of St. Peter in Westminster 
was built in the 13 th century, upon the site of an earlier church raised by Edward the 
Confessor in the nth century. Since the Norman Conquest all but one of the English sov¬ 
ereigns have been crowned here, and until the time of George III, it served as their last rest¬ 
ing place. The abbey is now England’s Hall of Fame, where many of her distinguished 
statesmen, warriors, poets, artists, and scientists are buried. 











































































Government of Great Britain 


52i 


therefore, does not necessarily exclude a man 
from Parliament; he may always “stand” 
for another constituency. Prominent politi¬ 
cians, as a rule, retain seats in the House of 
Commons year after year. The property 
qualification for members of the House of 
Commons has been abolished, and they now 
receive salaries. 

Parliament works through a committee 
known as the cabinet. 1 This body, which de¬ 
veloped during the eighteenth 

^ . 6 . 6 The cabinet 

century, exists purely by cus¬ 
tom and has no place whatever in the writ¬ 
ten constitution of Great Britain. The cabi¬ 
net usually includes about twenty common¬ 
ers and lords, who belong to the party in 
power. During the World War, however, 
a “coalition” cabinet, representing both 
parties, carried on the government. Mem¬ 
bers of the cabinet are selected by a caucus 
of the majority party in Parliament, always, 
of course, with the approval of the prime 
minister, who is the recognized leader of the 
party. The cabinet acts together in all mat¬ 
ters, thus presenting a united front to Par¬ 
liament and the country. 

The cabinet shapes legislation, determines 
policy, and drafts the more important meas¬ 
ures to be laid before the House cabinet 
of Commons. That body may government 
amend bills thus presented to it, but amend¬ 
ments are usually few and unimportant. 
Should a cabinet measure fail to pass the Com- 

1 The terms “cabinet” and “ministry” are used inter¬ 
changeably. The ministry, however, contains a large 
number of administrative officers who do not attend cabi- 
ten meetings. 



House of Com¬ 


mons Mace 

The mace, the symbol 
of the Speaker of the 
House of Commons, re¬ 
mains on the table before 
him while he occupies the 
presiding chair. 






522 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 


mons, or should the Commons vote a resolution of “no confi¬ 
dence,” custom requires the cabinet to resign or “go to the 
country.” In the former case, the king “sends for” the leader 
of the opposite party and invites him to form a cabinet which will 
have the support of the Commons. In the latter case, the king 
dissolves Parliament and calls a general election. The return 

of a majority favorable 
to the cabinet permits 
it to remain in office; 
otherwise the prime 
minister and his asso¬ 
ciates give way to a 
cabinet formed by the 
Opposition. 

However powerful, 
the cabinet is not an 
irresponsi¬ 
ble oligar¬ 
chy. Pub¬ 
lic opinion prevails in 
Great Britain as in other 
democratic countries. 
Proposals for new leg¬ 
islation, as a rule, are 
thoroughly discussed in 
newspapers and on the platform before and after their sub¬ 
mission by the cabinet to the House of Commons. As 
has been noted, general elections must be held at least every 
five years and may be held at any time in order to secure an 
expression of the popular will. Furthermore, a defeat at a 
general election or a defeat or vote of censure in the House 
of Commons is not always necessary for the downfall of a 
cabinet. The prime minister sometimes resigns office even 
when he retains a majority in the Commons, if he feels that 
his policies are no longer acceptable to the country at large. 
Public opinion thus affects all legislative measures and de¬ 
termines the rise and fall of cabinets. 



No. io, Downing Street 

The larger of the two houses here shown is the official 
residence of the British prime minister. It faces a little 
street opening into Whitehall and near the Parliament 
buildings. 






New European Nations 523 

145. New European Nations 

The national movements, which between 1848 and 1871 had 
transformed both Italy and Germany into great unified states, 
did not stop or lag after 1871. Nationalism con- Nationalism, 
tinued to be a transforming force during the forty- 1871-1914 
three years that passed before the outbreak of the World War. 
There were noteworthy changes in the Balkans, as the result 
of the decline of Turkey. Rumania and Bulgaria gained inde¬ 
pendence, while Serbia and Montenegro, which earlier in the 
nineteenth century had thrown off the Ottoman yoke, became 
separate kingdoms. Greece, independent of Turkey since 
1829, continued to widen her boundaries at the latter’s expense 
and brought together under one government many Greek 
peoples scattered about the basin of the ^Egean. Another 
change produced by nationalism was the separation of Norway 
and Sweden in 1905, as the result of a plebiscite. The Congress 
of Vienna had joined the two countries in a personal union 
under the Swedish king, but the Norwegians resented this 
arrangement and almost to a man voted for complete inde¬ 
pendence. National sentiment also stirred the Irish people to 
secure from Great Britain, if not complete independence, at 
least self-government. Their long agitation finally led to the 
creation in 1922 of the Irish Free State, which enjoys the same 
privileged position as Canada and the other self-governing 
Dominions of the British Empire. 1 The Irish thus secured the 
right of ruling themselves, though Great Britain keeps some 
control over them in military and international matters. 

The World War was followed by a series of treaties between 
the victorious Allies on the one side and the Central Powers 
(Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, and Turkey) on the The new 
other side. The peace treaties, together with the map of 
diplomatic arrangements entered into between the Europe 
Allies themselves, have produced territorial changes more ex- 

1 Ulster, or Northern Ireland, the population of which is chiefly Scotch and 
English, has not united with the Irish Free State and maintains a separate govern¬ 
ment. 


524 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 


tensive than those following any previous European conflict. 
They affected every Continental state except Spain and 
Portugal. A new map of Europe was drawn. 

The new map is based, in large part, on the principle of self- 
determination as applied to nationalities. This had received 
National self- little or no consideration at the Congress of Vienna 
determination (§ 139). Germany after her unification, and Aus¬ 
tria-Hungary and Turkey throughout the nineteenth century, 
systematically opposed nationalism as a force likely to break up 
their empires. Russia upheld the same policy for the same 
reason. Each of these countries contained numerous “sub¬ 
merged nationalities,” governed against their will by those 
whom they regarded as foreigners. The defeat of the Central 
Powers and the Russian Revolution offered, therefore, a unique 
opportunity to make over Europe in the name and in the 
interest of all its peoples great and small. 

The fixing of the boundaries of the new states was a difficult 
task. The peace conferences arranged for plebiscites in various 
Boundary disputed areas, in order to determine what were the 

problems real w j s h es of the inhabitants. The need of re¬ 

specting historic rights also required consideration, together 
with the necessity of securing strategic frontiers and access to 
the sea for the new states about to be created. 

Germany and Turkey, shorn of their alien elements, became 
essentially national states. Austria and Hungary arose as 
National national states, each with a homogeneous popula- 
states tion. New national states appeared in Jugoslavia, 

Czechoslovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Esthonia, and 
Finland. Jugoslavia represents a voluntary union of all South 
Slavs in the former kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro, to¬ 
gether with their neighbors in the former Slavic provinces of 
Austria-Hungary. Czechoslovakia, as its name indicates, has 
been formed from territories occupied by the Czechs and Slovaks, 
who until the World War were Austro-Hungarian subjects. 
Poland includes much of the territory taken by Austria, Prussia, 
and Russia in the partitions of the eighteenth century. Lithu¬ 
ania, Latvia, Esthonia, and Finland were Russian provinces 






















‘ 



















u 

R ■ 













. 





























































































New European Nations 


525 


which profited by the war to declare and to secure their inde¬ 
pendence. Whether or not all these new national states en¬ 
dure, they have certainly been established in accordance with 
the principle of self-determination. 

Some other countries completed their national unification 
as a result of the war and the peace treaties following it. France 
got back her National 
“Lost Prov- unification 

inces” (§ 142) from Ger¬ 
many. The cession of 
Alsace-Lorraine restores 
the Rhine, to a great ex¬ 
tent, as the boundary 
between the two coun¬ 
tries. Italy secured “Un¬ 
redeemed Italy” (§ 141) 
from Austria, thus obtain¬ 
ing a frontier much more 
defensible against attacks 
from the north. The most 
striking step toward unifi¬ 
cation was taken by Ru¬ 
mania, which acquired so 
much territory from Hun- Powder Gate, Prague 

gary and Russia as to be 0ne o£ * he Gothic towers in Central Europe. 
0 J Begun in 1475 and completed in 1506. 

more than doubled in size. 

It is now the largest and most powerful of the Balkan states. 

One obvious outcome of the war and the peace settlement was 
the lengthening of the zones of possible friction in Europe. 
Eight thousand miles of old boundary lines on the Zones of 
Continent were increased to ten thousand miles, a friction in 
considerable part of this total representing newly Europe 
located boundaries. Will the states whose resources and terri¬ 
tory have been diminished be content with their new frontiers ? 
Will the states that have secured an increase of resources and 
territory be satisfied with their gains? We may raise these 
questions, though we cannot answer them. 








526 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 


146. Soviet Russia 

The hodge-podge of territories and babel of peoples composing 
the Russian Empire in the nineteenth century was ruled by an 
Russian autocratic tsar. His decrees were binding on all 

autocracy his subjects. Russian laws called him an “inde¬ 

pendent and absolute sovereign” and declared that God “orders 
men to submit to his superior authority, not only from fear of 
punishment, but as a religious duty.” The chief interest of 
Russian history during the last century lies in the development 
of liberalism, which gradually undermined the whole fabric of 
autocracy, and in the revolutionary year of 1917 brought it 
crashing to the ground. 

The opposition to autocracy developed rapidly in Russia 
during the reign of Nicholas II. Not only working people and 
Reign of peasants, but also the middle classes and en- 

Nicholas II lightened members of the nobility combined to 

demand for Russia the free institutions which were now no longer 
novelties in western Europe. Revolutionary disorders at 
length compelled the tsar to grant franchise rights and provide 
for a national assembly (Duma). It met four times, and accom¬ 
plished some useful legislation, but it did not succeed in winning 
liberty for the people. When the World War broke out, the 
tsar’s government seemed to be as firmly established as ever. 

The war soon showed how inefficient, weak, and corrupt that 
government was. The demoralization of Russia led to one 
Abdication of defeat after another and to a general break-down 
the tsar, of the national life. A severe shortage of food in 
March, 1917 capital city brought matters to a crisis. Riot¬ 
ing began, and the troops were ordered to -suppress it with 
bullet and bayonet in the usual pitiless fashion. But the old 
army, so long the prop of autocracy, languished in German 
prison camps or lay underground. The new army, mostly 
recruited from peasants and workingmen since the war began, 
refused to fire on the people. Autocracy found itself helpless. 
The tsar then abdicated, thus ending the Romanov dynasty 
after three hundred and four years of absolute power (§ 107). 


Soviet Russia 


5 2 7 


The revolutionists set up a provisional government headed by 
the executive committee of the Duma. Nearly all the members 
belonged to the middle class, or bourgeoisie. Many A middle _ 
liberal reforms were announced: liberty of speech class revolu- 
and of the press; the right of suffrage for both men tlon 
and women ; a general pardon for all political offenders; and a 
national assembly to draw up 
a constitution. Russia was to 
be a political democracy. 

Socialists did not rest satis¬ 
fied with these measures. 

They planned to a socialist 
give the revolu- revolution 

tion an economic rather than 
merely a political character. 

Throughout Russia they set 
up soviets, or local councils 
representing working men and 
soldiers. The socialistic prop¬ 
aganda for a general peace 
on the basis of “no annexa¬ 
tions and no indemnities” also 

made rapid headway with the army at the front. The troops 
began to elect their own officers, to fraternize with the enemy, 
and to desert in large numbers. Under these circumstances 
Russia in November, 1917, underwent a second revolution, 
which placed the radical socialists, known as Bolsheviki, 1 in 
supreme power. 

The two men at the head of the revolutionary movement were 
Nicholas Lenin and Leo Trotsky. Lenin was born of Russian 
parents and was brought up in the Orthodox faith. Lenin and 
He received an education in economics and law at Trotsk y 
the University of Petrograd. His socialistic activities soon re¬ 
sulted in a three years’ exile to Siberia. After his release he went 
abroad and became prominent in the revolutionary circles of 
many European capitals. Trotsky, a Russian Jew, also suffered 

1 A Russian word meaning “majority men.” 



528 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 

exile to Siberia as an undesirable agitator, the first time for 
four years, the second time for life. Having managed to es¬ 
cape, Trotsky went to western Europe and later .to the United 
States. After the Russian Revolution both men returned to 



their native country and engaged in socialistic propaganda, 
with the results that have been seen. Lenin became premier and 
Trotsky foreign minister (later minister of war) in the new 
government. 



























Soviet Russia 


529 


Lenin, Trotsky, and the other revolutionary leaders were 
radical socialists. They confiscated much private property and 
allowed the peasants to take over and divide up the The Boishe- 
great estates, without compensation to the former vist regime 
owners. They “nationalized” railways, banks, forests, and 
mines. They seized the factories, which were to be operated 
henceforth by workingmen and for workingmen. They con¬ 
scripted laborers from the hated middle and upper classes, 
drove them to work like slaves, and even had them executed 
for “industrial desertion.” These things were done by a small 
party of communists, or socialists, whose numbers, according to 
official figures, never exceeded half a million. In short, the 
Bolshevist regime was — and still is — a dictatorship over the 
great masses of the Russian people. It was — and still is — 
supported by terrorism, by exiling, imprisoning, or killing all 
who oppose it, just as the old tsarist government disposed of 
its enemies. Individual liberty is non-existent in Soviet Russia. 

Russia possesses a so-called constitution, framed in 1918 by 
the Congress of Soviets, which takes the place of a national 
parliament. The constitution grants the franchise The Bolshe _ 
to men and women over eighteen years of age, if vist “ Consti- 
they are “productive” laborers. This means, in tutlon 
practice, that all business men, professional men, merchants, and 
bankers, as well as peasants who employ other peasants on their 
farms, cannot vote or hold any public office or serve in the army. 
They are not citizens, according to the Bolshevist definition of 
citizenship. Clergymen and monks are also excluded from 
political rights. Democracy, as well as individual liberty, is 
non-existent in Soviet Russia. 

The Bolsheviki recognized the independence of the five 
republics — Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland 
— which were formed at the close of the World War The Soviet 
from territories once included in the Russian federation 
Empire. They also agreed, reluctantly, to the transfer of 
Bessarabia to Rumania. Russia thus lost most of its subject and 
alien peoples in Europe and became a national state inhabited 
almost entirely by Russians. The capital now went back from 


530 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 


Petrograd to Moscow. The Bolsheviki have created out of 
the territories controlled by them a great federation known as 
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It includes Soviet 
Russia, the largest and most important state, White Russia, 
Ukrainia, and three small republics in the Caucasus. Soviet 
Russia grants to the other states in the union some degree of 
independence in local concerns, but requires them to maintain 
a Bolshevist government and controls their foreign relations. 
The new federation is declared to be a decisive step toward the 
“union of the toilers of all countries into one world Soviet 
Socialist Republic.” 


Autocracy 

versus 

democracy 


147. New European Democracies 

When the World War began, two-thirds of Europe was under 
autocratic rule. Germany, which refused to accept either the 
principles or the practice of democracy, found 
natural support in Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and 
Turkey. Autocratic Russia, it is true, fought on 
the side of the Allies, but the Russian Revolution for a time 
promised to enroll that country among liberal states. The 
triumph of the Central Powers would not only have dashed the 
hopes of all the “submerged nationalities” in Europe; it would 
have imperiled the existence of popular government everywhere. 
Germany and her allies in 1914 flung down a challenge to the 
liberties of mankind. 

All know how that challenge was met. Two emperors, those 
of Germany and Austria; two tsars, those of Russia and Bul- 
Sovereigns garia; six kings, those of Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, 
dethroned Wiirttemberg, Hungary, and Greece, one sultan, and 
a crowd of princes, grand dukes and dukes gave up their heredi¬ 
tary rights and sought refuge either in obscurity or in exile. 
With the emperors, kings, princes, grand dukes, and dukes 

, went the whole theory of absolutism and divine 
Absolutism .... 

and divine right. Monarchy itself disappeared in most of 
right dis- central and eastern Europe. The war revealed, 

credited .... 

clearly enough, what rum might be caused by the 

vanity, selfishness, and ambition of a few persons. They had 


New European Democracies 


53i 


long menaced the peace and happiness of the world. At last, 
the world is done with them. 

Socialists took the leadership of the revolutionary move¬ 
ments in several European countries during and after the World 
War. As we have just seen in the case of Russia, The socialistic 
there are two socialistic parties. Moderate social- upheaval 
ists rely on the ballot to abolish capitalism and introduce state 
ownership of the means of production: they are democrats in 
their political thinking and accept the democratic principle of 
majority rule. Radical socialists, or communists, advocate 
violent means of overthrowing the capitalistic middle class, the 
hated bourgeoisie , in order to set up a dictatorship of the prole¬ 
tariat. The contrast between the two socialistic parties is well 
marked in Germany, where the principles of Karl Marx and his 
followers first became popular among workingmen (§ 133). 

The Social Democrats before the war were the chief opponents 
of militarism and autocracy in Germany, and even in 1914 a 
bold minority of them resisted the war fever then The German 
sweeping over the country. The events of 1918 Republic 
strengthened their hands; both the army and the navy became 
saturated with the revolutionary spirit; and a few days before 
the signing of the armistice the uprising occurred which sent 
the Hohenzollerns into exile and established a socialistic govern¬ 
ment, with Friedrich Ebert, once a saddler, at its head. The 
moderate socialists in control of affairs immediately encountered 
the opposition of the radicals, who planned to deprive the bour¬ 
geoisie of all power and establish a proletarian regime. There 
were bitter conflicts between the radicals and the republican 
troops. Law and order finally triumphed, after much bloodshed. 

Ebert and his associates summoned a national assembly, 
which met at Weimar in 1919 and drafted a constitution. This 
was speedily ratified by a popular vote. The new Constitution 
Germany is essentially a federative republic, 0 f the 
though still described by the old name Reich, or 
Empire. Foreign affairs, colonies, immigration and 
emigration, military organization, coinage, tariffs, and posts, 
telegraphs, and telephones are reserved to the nation as a whole. 


532 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 


The eighteen confederated states may legislate on many other 
matters, subject, however, to the prior right of legislation by 
the nation. Every state must have a republican form of gov¬ 
ernment. 

Germany, by its new constitution, has become a genuinely 
democratic country. All Germans are declared equal before 
German the law. All privileges, whether of birth, class, or 
democracy creed, are abolished. The right of suffrage is be¬ 
stowed on all citizens, both men and women. The new demo¬ 
cratic republic enjoys the support, not only of the moderate 
socialists, but also of the more liberal and progressive elements 
throughout Germany. 

The stability of the democracies that have sprung up in so 
much of Europe has sometimes been threatened by the radical 
socialists, or communists, who form an appreciable element of 
Democracy the P°P u l a ti° n in many states. The efforts of the 
and com- communists to duplicate in Italy the conditions 
munism prevailing in Bolshevist Russia led to the for¬ 
mation of the so-called Fascisti, 1 a party which opposed the 
physical violence of the communists with still greater violence. 
The Fascisti found a leader in Benito Mussolini, a former 
Italian soldier in the war. He has become a sort of temporary 
dictator of Italy, controlling both parliament and king, and has 
carried through many governmental reforms. The French com¬ 
munists possess a considerable representation in the Chamber of 
Deputies. The Labor Party, which for a time in 1924 controlled 
the British government, consists chiefly of moderate socialists, 
but with a fringe of radicals who support the communist 
movement. 

The spread of political democracy has resulted in the making 
of many new constitutions. These are generally liberal docu- 
Liberal ments. They separate Church and State, where 

constitutions the two h a d previously been united. They also 
provide for a system of common schools, so that the people may 
understand and appreciate democratic institutions. Other 

1 The fasces in Old Rome were a bundle of rods wrapped about an ax and carried 
before the highest magistrates as an emblem of authority. 


New European Democracies 


533 


noteworthy features of the constitutions are the insistence on 
ministerial responsibility to parliament — cabinet government — 
and the adoption of proportional representation, in order that 
small parties and minorities may secure representation in the 
legislature. 

The new European states are mostly republican in form. 
Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, 
Esthonia, Finland, Albania, Greece, Soviet Russia, R epub ii cs and 
and Turkey (as far as it is a European power) have constitutional 
been added to the list of republics, which before the monarchies 
World War included only France, Switzerland, and Portugal. 
Jugoslavia and Hungary are the only new states to become 
monarchies, but they are constitutional monarchies, similar to 
those found in the western half of the Continent. Popular 
sovereignty is thus everywhere assumed as the basis of govern¬ 
ment. Democracy, as well as nationalism, has triumphed in 
Europe since the days of the French Revolution. We shall see 
in the next chapter that democratic and national movements 
have now begun to extend beyond Europe to Africa, Asia, and 
Oceania. 

GOVERNMENTS OF THE WORLD 


I. Federated Republics 
United States 
Mexico 
Venezuela 

Brazil • 

Argentina 

Switzerland 

Germany (Deutsches Reich) 

Russia (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) 

1. Soviet Russia 4- Georgia 

2. White Russia 5. Azerbaijan 

3. Ukrainia 6. Armenia 


II. Centralized Republics 
Cuba 
Haiti 

Santo Domingo 
Guatemala 
Honduras 
Salvador 


Uruguay 
France 
Portugal 
San Marino 
Austria 

Czechoslovakia 


534 Democracy and Nationalism in Europe 

II. Centralized Republics ( Continued) 


Nicaragua 

Poland 

Costa Rica 

Lithuania 

Panama 

Latvia 

Colombia 

Esthonia 

Ecuador 

Finland 

Peru 

Albania 

Bolivia 

Greece 

Chile 

Turkey 

Paraguay 

Liberia 

China (with Manchuria, Tibet, Sinkiang, and Mongolia) 

III. Constitutional Monarchies 


Great Britain (and Irish 

Hungary 

Free State) 

Rumania 

Belgium 

Bulgaria 

Netherlands 

Jugoslavia (Serb, Croat, 

Denmark (and Iceland) 

Slovene State) 

Norway 

Egypt 

Sweden 

Iraq 

Spain 

Persia 

Italy 

Siam 

IV. Despotic Monarchies 


Abyssinia 

Nepal 

Morocco 

Bhutan 

Hejaz 

Japan 

Oman 



Studies 


i. Differentiate the terms nation, people, state, and government. 
2. “ Similarity of language invites the unity of a people, but does not 
compel it.” Comment on this statement. 3. “ The principal cause 
of the ruin of royalty in France was* the lack of a King.” What does 
this statement mean? 4. Is it correct to call Napoleon an “ enlight¬ 
ened ” despot? Is it incorrect to call him a “usurper”? 5. Why 
was Napoleon called by the lawyers a new Justinian and by the clergy 
a new Constantine? 6. What was meant by describing the French 
revolutionary armies as “ equality on the march ”? 7. “ England is 

the mother of liberty, France the mother of equality.” Explain this 
statement. 8. “ The nineteenth century is precisely the history of 
the work which the French Revolution left.” Comment on this state¬ 
ment. 9. “ The name of Metternich has become a synonym for reac¬ 
tion and conservatism.” Explain this statement. 10. Why has France 
been called the “ magnetic pole ” of Europe? 11. Mention some of 
the “ submerged nationalities ” of Europe at the middle of the nine¬ 
teenth century. 12. “ Nations are seldom born except on the field of 


160 180 160 120 Longitude West 80 from Greenwich 40 0 40 Longitude East 80 from Greenwich 120 



a 

CD 

cn 

►d 

O 

rt- 


o 

o 

Sg 


o w 

WS! 
r 1 h 

o c/3 

o 


120 






























































































































































































































New European Democracies 


535 


battle.” Illustrate this statement by reference to the history of Italy 
and Germany in the nineteenth century. 13. Distinguish between 
England, Great Britain, the United Kingdom, and the British Empire. 

14. Show that in Great Britain “ the king reigns but does not govern.” 

15. Contrast the unlimited powers of the British Parliament with the 

limited powers of the American Congress. 16. What did Mr. Lloyd 
George mean by saying, “ This is a war of nationalities ” ? 17. Com¬ 

ment on the tsar’s title “ Autocrat of all the Russias.” 18. Describe 
the present organization of Bolshevist rule in Russia. 19. What did 
President Wilson mean by saying, “ The world must be made safe for 
democracy ”? 20. Making use of the index to this book, give some 

account of the origin, character, and extinction of the Hapsburg, 
Hohenzollern, and Romanov dynasties. 21. What European states 
are federative republics and what ones centralized republics (map 
facing page 534)? 22. How many independent countries were there 

in Europe in 1914? How many are there now? 



Chamber of Deputies, Paris 

This fine structure was built in the eighteenth century as a palace for members of the 
Bourbon-Conde family. It became national property during the French Revolution. The 
facade, which faces the Pont de la Concorde, is in the style of an ancient temple. 







CHAPTER XVI 


EXPANSION OF EUROPE IN THE OLD WORLD 1 
148. Greater Europe 

Colonial expansion, begun by Spaniards and Portuguese 
in the sixteenth century and continued in the seventeenth and 
Expansion of eighteenth centuries by French, English, Dutch, 
Europe and Russians, reached its greatest extent during 

the past hundred-odd years. It is principally this movement 
which gives such world-wide significance to European history. 
The languages, literatures, religions, laws, and customs of 
Europe have been extended to almost all mankind. 

This wonderful expansion of European peoples and European 
civilization was largely an outcome of the great industrial 

. , changes in modern times. Improvements in 
Colonial & , 

expansion and means oi transportation — railroads, canals, steam 

modern navigation — by facilitating travel permitted an 

industrialism . ... z, 

extensive emigration from Europe into other con¬ 
tinents. Improved communication — the telegraph and the tel¬ 
ephone — by annihilating distance made easier the occupation 
and government of remote dependencies. The growth of manu¬ 
facturing in Europe also gave increased importance to colonies 
as sources of supply for raw materials and foodstuffs, as markets 
for finished goods, and as places of investment for the surplus 
wealth accumulated by the capitalists whom modern industrial¬ 
ism created. 

Great Britain in 1815 was the leading world power. France 
had been well-nigh eliminated as a colonial rival by the Seven 

1 Webster, Readings in Modern European History, chapter xxxvi, “ The Pene¬ 
tration of Africa” ; chapter xxxvii, “ Japan Old and New.” 

536 





































































































































Greater Europe 


537 


Years’ War, and Holland had lost valuable possessions over¬ 
seas in the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. In America, 
Great Britain held Canada, some of the West The British 
India islands, and part of Guiana; in Africa, Cape Em P ire 
Colony; in Asia, much of India and Ceylon; and in Australia, 
the eastern coast. The British Empire continued to grow 
throughout the nineteenth century, until it embraced in 1914 
approximately a fourth of the habitable area of the earth and 
a fourth of the earth’s population. No such wide dominion 
had ever been built up before, either in ancient or medieval 
times. 

The spectacle of the British Empire, so populous, so rich 
in natural resources, so far-flung, stirred the imagination and 
aroused the envy of the witnessing nations. They, other colo- 
also, became eager for possessions in savage or half- nial em P ires 
civilized lands. France, from the time of Louis Philippe, began 
to conquer northwestern Africa and Madagascar and to acquire 
territories in southeastern Asia. Italy and Germany, having 
attained nationhood, entered into the race for overseas domin¬ 
ions. Portugal and Spain annexed new colonies. Little 
Belgium built up a colonial empire in Africa. Mighty Russia 
spread out eastward over the whole of Siberia and, having 
reached the Pacific, moved southward toward the warmer waters 
of the Indian Ocean. Meanwhile, the United States expanded 
across the North American continent, acquired the Philippines 
and other dependencies, and stood forth at length as an imperial 
power. Few and unimportant were those regions of the world 
which remained unappropriated at the opening of the twentieth 
century. 

The word “imperialism” conveniently describes all this activ¬ 
ity of the different nations in reaching out for colonial de¬ 
pendencies. Sometimes imperialism leads to the Imperialism 
declaration of a protectorate over a region, or, 
perhaps, to the marking off a sphere of influence where other 
powers agree not to interfere. Sometimes it goes no further 
than the securing of concessions in undeveloped countries such as 
Mexico, Brazil, or China. Most commonly, however, imperi- 


538 Expansion of Europe in the Old World 

alism results in the complete annexation of a distant territory, 
with or without the consent of the inhabitants. 

The imperialistic ambitions of the great powers more than 
once led them to disregard the rights of weaker nations in 
Imperialism Africa, Asia, and other parts of the world. Great 
and national- Britain subdued the two Boer republics in South 
Africa. Italy attempted to conquer the inde¬ 
pendent nation of Abyssinia, and Great Britain, France, 
Germany, and Russia at one time threatened to divide up 
China. It should be said, however, that in most cases colonial 
dependencies have been secured only at the expense of savage 
or barbarous peoples. 

It has been manifestly impossible for even the most demo¬ 
cratic of modern nations to grant self-government to their rude 
imperialism an d backward subjects. Where the level of civili- 
and zation is higher, as in Egypt and India, the pre¬ 

democracy vailing illiteracy of the inhabitants forms a great 
obstacle in the way of democracy. Great Britain, however, 
has raised round herself a circle of self-governing daughters in 
Canada, Australia, and South Africa, and France permits some 
of her colonies to send representatives to the French legislature. 
Other instances of the bestowal of free institutions upon native 
peoples will be referred to as we proceed with the story of Euro¬ 
pean expansion in the Old World. 


149. The Opening-up of Africa 

Speaking broadly, Africa consists of an elevated plateau 
with a fringe of unindented coastal plain. Penetration of the 
Physical interior was long made difficult by mountain ranges 

Afnca which approach close to the sea, by rapids and 

falls which hinder river navigation, by the barrier of dense 
forests and extensive deserts, and by the unhealthiness of 
the climate in many regions. Though lying almost in sight 
of Europe, Africa remained until our own time the “Dark 
Continent.” 

Many different peoples have found a home in Africa. All 


The Opening-up of Africa 


539 



the northern part of the continent is occupied by the White Race, 
divided into the three great groups of Semites (Arabs), East¬ 
ern Hamites, and Western Hamites, or Libyans. Radal Africj 
The Black Race since prehistoric times has held 
the rest of the continent. The true negroes are confined to the 
Sudan and adjacent regions. Some negroes have blended more 















































































540 Expansion of Europe in the Old World 


Little more than 
known in antiquity. 


or less with Hamites, giving rise to the Bantu-speaking peoples, 
who dwell chiefly south of the equator. To these elements of the 
native population must be added the Pygmies in the equatorial 
districts, together with Hottentots and Bushmen in the extreme 
south. 

the Mediterranean shore of Africa was 
Here were Egypt, the first home of civili¬ 
zation, and Car- 
Africa until , 

the nine- thage, Romes most 

teenth cen- formidable rival for 

tury -p. 

supremacy. Dur¬ 
ing the earlier Middle Ages all 
North Africa fell under Arab 
domination. Arab missionaries, 
warriors, and slave-hunters also 
spread along the eastern coast 
and established trading posts as 
far south as the mouth of the 
Zambesi River. The vast ex¬ 
tent of the continent was first 
revealed to Europeans by the 
Portuguese discoveries in the 
second-half of the fifteenth cen¬ 
tury (§ 97). The Portuguese imitated the Arabs in founding sta¬ 
tions upon both the eastern and western coasts, where they did a 
profitable business in ivory, gold, gum, rubber, and especially in 
black men, who were seized and exported by thousands annually 
to be sold as slaves. The merchants of Spain, Holland, France, 
and Great Britain also shared in this traffic. Europeans'did not 
try to settle in Africa, except at the Cape of Good Hope, where 
the Dutch had a colony after the middle of the seventeenth cen¬ 
tury (§ 115). 

The penetration of Africa has been mainly accomplished by 
The Niger following the course of its four great rivers. In 
and the the last decade of the eighteenth century the 

Nile basins British African Association, then recently founded, 
sent Mungo Park to the Niger. He and his immediate succes- 



The Opening-up of Africa 


54i 



sors explored the basin of that river and revealed the existence of 
the mysterious city of Timbuktu, an Arab capital never pre¬ 
viously visited by Europeans. The determination of the sources 
of the Nile — a problem which had interested the ancients — 




































































542 Expansion of Europe in the Old World 

met with success shortly after the middle of the nineteenth 
century. The explorations of Speke and Grant resulted in the 
discovery of the great lake inyanza) which serves as the head 
reservoir of the White Nile. It was named Victoria Nyanza, 
in honor of the queen of England. The discovery of snow-clad 
mountains in this part of Africa confirmed what Greek geogra¬ 
phers had taught regarding the “ Mountains of the Moon ” (§ 61). 

Meanwhile, an intrepid Scotch missionary and explorer, David 
Livingstone, traced the course of the Zambesi. Starting from 
Basins of the Cape, he worked his way northward, found the 
Zambesi and wonderful Victoria Falls, and crossed the continent 
the Congo from sea to sea. When on one of his journeys 
Livingstone disappeared for years in Africa, the New York 
Herald sent Henry M. Stanley to find him. Stanley, who was 
a Welshman by birth and an American by adoption, had led an 
adventurous life as a newspaper correspondent in many lands. 
He found Livingstone in 1871, greeting him in the heart of 
Africa with the historic words, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” 
Stanley’s second exploring trip in Africa was epoch-making, for 
he showed that Lake Tanganyika drained into the Congo and 
he followed the mighty stream all the way to its mouth. 

Mission work in Africa went hand in hand with geographical 
discovery. Not a great deal has been accomplished in North 
African Africa, where Islam is supreme from Morocco to 

missions Egypt and from the Mediterranean to io° north 
of the equator. Abyssinia, the negro republic of Liberia, and 
South Africa, as far as it is white, are entirely Christian. The 
accompanying map shows how mission stations, both Roman 
Catholic and Protestant, have been planted throughout the 
broad belt of heathenism in Central Africa. 


150 . The Partition of Africa 

The division of Africa among European powers followed 
promptly upon its exploration. Spain, Portugal, Belgium, 
Germany, Italy, France, and Great Britain all profited by 
the scramble for African territory, particularly during the 


The Partition of Africa 


543 


’eighties and the ’nineties of the last century. The Spanish 
possessions are small, compared with those of the other powers, 
and, except for the northern coast of Morocco, 
not of great importance. Portugal, however, con- a nd Portu- 
trols the two valuable regions of Angola and Por- suese in 
tuguese East Africa. 



The possessions of Belgium grew out of Stanley’s discoveries. 
He realized what sources of wealth might be tapped in the 
rubber, ivory, The Belgians 
and palm-oil of in Africa 
the vast Congo basin and 
persuaded the king of the 
Belgians to supply funds 
for the establishment of 
trading stations in that 
part of Africa. These were 
afterward converted into a 
colony known as the Bel¬ 
gian Congo. Its area has 
now been considerably in¬ 
creased by the acquisition 
of former German territo¬ 
ries. 

Soon after Germany 
reached national unity, she 
made her appearance among colonial powers. Treaties with the 
native chiefs and various annexations resulted in the The Germans 
acquisition of extensive regions in Southwest Africa, in Afnca 
East Africa, the Cameroons, and Togo. They were all con¬ 
quered by the Allies during the World War. 

Italy was another late-comer on the African scene. She 
secured Eritrea on the Red Sea and Italian Somaliland. An 
Italian attempt to annex Abyssinia ended dis- The Italians 
astrously, and the ancient Abyssinian “empire” in Africa 
still remains independent. Italy’s most important African 
colony is Libya, conquered from Turkey in 1911-1912. The 
country in Turkish hands was misgoverned and undeveloped, 


Henry M. Stanley 

After a photograph in 1886. 


544 Expansion of Europe in the Old World 


but its fertile coast is well adapted to agriculture, and even the 
barren interior may become valuable through irrigation. 

The beginnings of French dominion in Africa reach back to 
the seventeenth century, when Louis XIV began to acquire 
The French trading posts along the western coast and in 
in Africa Madagascar. It was not until the nineteenth cen¬ 

tury, however, that the French entered seriously upon the work 
of colonization. France now holds Algeria, Tunis, most of 


Morocco, the valleys of the 
Senegal and Upper Niger, part 
of the Guinea coast, French 
Somaliland, and the island of 
Madagascar. A glance at the 
map shows that the African pos¬ 
sessions of France exceed in 
area those of any other power, 
but they include the Sahara 
Desert. 



Great Britain has secured, if 
not the lion’s share, at &ny rate 
The British in the most valuable 
South Africa share of Africa. 

Besides extensive possessions 
on the Guinea coast, she holds a 


Cecil Rhodes 


solid block of territory all the way from the Cape of Good Hope 
to the Mediterranean. Cape Colony was captured from the 
Dutch during the Napoleonic wars. The Dutch farmers, or 
Boers, did not take readily to British rule. Many of them, with 
their families and flocks, moved from Cape Colony into the 
unknown country beyond. This wholesale emigration resulted 
in the formation of the Boer republics of Natal, Orange Free 
State, and the Transvaal. Natal was soon annexed by Great 
Britain, but the other two republics remained independent. 
The discovery of the world’s richest gold mines in the Transvaal 
led to a large influx of Englishmen, who, since they paid taxes, 
demanded a share in the government. The champion of British 
interests was Cecil Rhodes, an Oxford student who found riches 

















I 

























































































































































































































.. 

. 









' 


















' 














. 


. 













■ 

' 







. • 

■ 













The Partition of Africa 


545 


in the Kimberley diamond fields and rose to be prime minister 
of Cape Colony. The Dutch settlers, under the lead of Presi¬ 
dent Kruger of the Transvaal, were just as determined to keep 
the government in their own hands. Disputes between the 
two peoples resulted in the South African War (1899-1902), 
in which the Boers were overcome by sheer weight of num¬ 
bers. 

The war had a happy outcome. Great Britain showed a 
wise liberality toward her former foes and granted them self- 
government. Cape Colony, Natal, Orange Free union of 
State, and the Transvaal soon came together in South Africa 
the Union of South Africa. The Union has a governor-general 
appointed by the British Crown, a common parliament, and a 
responsible ministry. Cape Town and Pretoria are the two 
capitals, and both English and Dutch are official languages. 

Great Britain controls the imperial domain acquired by Cecil 
Rhodes and called after him Rhodesia. During the World 
War loyal Boers conquered German Southwest other British 
Africa and cooperated with the British in the possessions 
conquest of German East Africa. The Anglo- m Afnca 
Egyptian Sudan, comprising the region of the Upper Nile, was 
secured in the last decade of the nineteenth century, as the result 
of General Kitchener’s victories over its semi-civilized and 
Moslem inhabitants. 

The Egyptians have been subject to foreigners for over 
twenty-four hundred years. The Persians came to Egypt in the 
sixth century b.c. ; then the Macedonians under 
Alexander the Great; then the Romans under 
Julius Caesar; and afterward the Arabs and the Ottoman 
Turks. Turkish sultans ruled the country until the early part 
of the nineteenth century, when an able pasha, or governor, 
made himself almost an independent sovereign. His successors 
assumed the title of khedive, or ruler. Their misgovernment 
gave Great Britain and France an excuse for taking control of 
Egypt, in the interest of European bankers who had purchased 
the securities of that country. Financial intervention soon 
passed into military occupation, as the result of a revolt against 


546 Expansion of Europe in the Old World 


the khedive. It was suppressed by Great Britain alone in 1882, 
France having refused her cooperation. 

Once established in Egypt, the British began to make it over. 
They restored order, purified the courts, levied taxes fairly, 
British rule reorganized the finances, paid the public debt, 
in Egypt abolished forced labor, and took measures to im¬ 
prove sanitary conditions. British engineers built a railroad 
along the Nile, together with the famous Assuan Dam and other 
irrigation works which reclaimed millions of acres from the 
desert. For the first time in centuries, the peasants were 
assured of peace, justice, and an opportunity to make a decent 
living. Nevertheless, economic prosperity did not reconcile 
the people to foreign rule. The slogan “Egypt for the Egyp¬ 
tians” expressed their nationalist aspirations. Great Britain 
declared that she could not possibly accord complete inde¬ 
pendence to Egypt, on the ground that the country was still 
incapable of maintaining a stable government or of adequately 
safeguarding its own frontiers against foreign aggression. Con¬ 
trol of Egypt seemed to be necessary for the security of the 
British possessions in both Africa and Asia. However, revolu¬ 
tionary outbreaks on the part of the Egyptians at length led 
the British government to grant them partial independence in 
1922. Egypt then became a constitutional monarchy, with a 
constitution and a parliament. Great Britain controls the 
foreign affairs of the country and also keeps soldiers there for 
the protection of the Cape-to-Cairo Railway and the Suez Canal. 

The strategic importance of Egypt as the doorway to Africa 
will be much increased by the completion of the Cape-to-Cairo 
Cape-to- Railway. This transcontinental line starts from 
Cairo Cape Town, crosses Rhodesia, and will ultimately 

link up with the railway already in operation be¬ 
tween Khartum, Cairo, and Alexandria on the Mediterranean. 
The unfinished part is in the Congo region, where the Belgian 
government has ceded a strip of land to Great Britain, thus 
making it possible for the road to traverse British territory 
throughout its entire length of 6944 miles, or 7074 miles, if we 
include the distance between Cairo and Alexandria. The 


The Opening-up and Partition of Asia 547 


Cape-to-Cairo railway owes its inspiration to Cecil Rhodes, who 
dreamed of an “all red” route across Africa, and then with char¬ 
acteristic pluck and energy set out to make his dream come true. 

The completion of the Suez Canal has likewise put Egypt on 
the main oceanic highway to the Far East. The canal is a 
monument to the great French engineer, Ferdinand 

G ’ Suez Canal 

de Lesseps. It was opened to traffic in 1869. The 
money for the undertaking came chiefly from European inves¬ 
tors. Great Britain possesses a controlling interest in the 



enterprise. The canal, however, may be freely used by the 
ships of all nations. More than half of the voyages from Europe 
to the Far East are now made through the canal rather than 
around the Cape of Good Hope. Its commercial importance is 
also indicated by the fact that it accommodates every year an 
amount of shipping approximately equal to that entering the 
port of New York from foreign countries. 


151 . The Opening-up and Partition of Asia 

We have already learned how the Ottoman Turks formed a 
great power in the Balkan Peninsula, captured Constantinople, 
and made it the capital of their empire (§79). The Ottoman 
The Turks also conquered all the Near East with Empire 
the exception of Persia. Their empire was built up by the 
sword; it fell by the sword. During the nineteenth and early 
twentieth centuries the Christian peoples of the Balkans, one 
after another, threw off the Ottoman yoke, until in 1914 Euro¬ 
pean Turkey was confined to the territory in the neighborhood 













548 Expansion of Europe in the Old World 


of Constantinople. The sultan continued to rule over Asia 
Minor, where the Turks are by far the most numerous people, 
and over Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Arabia, which 
are chiefly Arabic, not Turkish, in population. 

The Turks fought in the World War on the side of the Cen¬ 
tral Powers and paid heavily for doing so. The victorious Allies 
Republic compelled them to surrender all claim to the non- 

of Turkey Turkish provinces in Asia, thus restricting their 

dominions to Anatolia (Asia Minor) and the district about Con¬ 
stantinople. They lost about a third of the population and 
about half of the area included in the Ottoman Empire of 1914. 
The new Turkey has been a republic since 1923, with its capital 
at Angora and its first president Mustapha Kemal. His ener¬ 
getic government aims to develop the economic resources of the 
country by building railroads and fostering agriculture, to pro¬ 
mote education along Western lines, and, in general, to place 
Turkey among progressive nations. 

The French hold Syria under a mandate from the League of 
Nations. 1 Syria now comprises all the territory between Turkey 
g . on the north, Mesopotamia on the east, Arabia 

(Transjordania) and Palestine on the south, and 
the Mediterranean on the west. The bulk of the population is 
of Arabic origin, Arabic is the prevailing language, and Islam 
is the leading religion. The interests of France in this part of 
the Levant are chiefly commercial in character. French schools 
and missions are also very numerous there. 

The British received the mandate for Palestine. They are 
pledged to develop the Holy Land as a national home for the 
Palestine J ews — a people without a country for nearly 
eighteen hundred years. A good many “Zionists,” 
or Jewish nationalists, are now emigrating to Palestine, but 
Jews do not form as yet more than one-eighth of the total popu¬ 
lation. The inhabitants are mainly Arabs. 

Great Britain, having been made the mandate power for Meso- 

1 A mandate is a commission issued in the name of the league to a certain 
nation authorizing it to administer a backward country for the benefit of the 
inhabitants. 


The Opening-up and Partition of Asia 549 

potamia, placed the country under an Arab king subject to 
British control. Iraq, as the new kingdom is called, is naturally 
one of the most favored regions in the world. 

British administration ought to redeem it from the 
long blight to which it has been subjected for centuries by 
Turkish misgovernment. With scientific agriculture and irriga¬ 
tion Iraq should soon become such a granary of the Near East 
as Babylonia was in ancient times. 

The Turks before the World War were ardent nationalists. 
Their efforts to “Ottomanize” all the peoples of the Ottoman 
Empire only succeeded in antagonizing the Arabs, ^ 
who have never forgotten that from their land came 
the Prophet, that in it are the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, 
and that Arabic is the sacred language of the Koran. The war 
enabled the Arabs to throw off Turkish control and to set up 
several independent states. The most important of these is 
Hejaz in western Arabia. 

The Russians were established in Siberia before the close 
of the seventeenth century. Their advance over this enormous 
but thinly peopled region was facilitated by its Russia in 
magnificent rivers, which furnished highways for northern Asia 
explorers and fur traders. Northern Siberia is a waste of swamp 
and tundra, where the terrible climate blocks the mouths of the 
streams with ice and even in summer keeps the ground frozen 
beneath the surface. Farther south comes a great belt of forest, 
the finest timbered area still intact on the face of the earth, 
and still farther south extend treeless steppes, adapted in part to 
agriculture and in part to herding. The country also contains 
much mineral wealth. In order to secure an outlet for Siberian 
products, Russia compelled China to cede the lower Amur Val¬ 
ley with the adjoining seacoast. The Russians in their newly 
acquired territory founded Vladivostok as a naval base. 

Vladivostok is also the eastern terminus of the Trans-Siberian 
Railway. The western terminus is Leningrad, The Xrans _ 
three thousand miles distant. The railway was Siberian 
completed in 1900 by the imperial government, Railway 
partly to facilitate the movement of troops and military sup- 


550 Expansion of Europe in the Old World 


plies in Siberia and partly to develop that region as a home 
for Russian emigrants and a market for Russian manufactures. 
A branch line extends to Port Arthur, which, unlike Vladivostok, 
is an ice-free harbor on the Pacific. 

Russia also widened her boundaries in central Asia by absorb¬ 
ing Turkestan east of the Caspian and south of Lake Balkash 
and the Aral Sea. Alarmed by the steady progress 
Grea^B^itain southward of the Russian colossus, Great Britain 
in central began to extend the northern and northwestern 
frontiers of India, in order to secure a mountain 
barrier for her Indian possessions. Half a century of feverish 
fears and restless advances on both sides was ended in 1907 by 
agreements between the two powers to consider Afghanistan 
and Tibet as “buffer states” in which they would make no 
annexations. Persia, now an independent kingdom under a 
constitutional monarch (shah), also serves as a barrier between 
Russia and Great Britain in Asia. 

Indo-China, except for the nominally independent state 

„ „ . . of Siam, is under British and French control. 

Great Britain . . 

and France in Great Britain holds Burma and the Straits Settle- 

southeastern m ents. France holds Tonkin, Anam, Laos, Cam- 
Asia . 

bodia, and Cochin-China. All these possessions 
have been acquired at the expense of China, which formerly 
exercised a vague sovereignty over southeastern Asia. 


152 . India 

British expansion in India, begun during the Seven Years’ 
War (§116), has proceeded scarcely without interruption to 
Conquest the present day. The conquest of India was 

of India almost inevitable. Sometimes the Indian princes 

attacked the British settlements and had to be overcome; 
sometimes the lawless condition of their dominions led to in¬ 
tervention ; sometimes, again, the need of finding defensible 
frontiers resulted in annexations. The entire peninsula, cover¬ 
ing an area half as large as the United States, is now under 
British control. 














10 


THE EUROPEAN ADVANCE IN ASIA 


British:. 
French: . 


Russian: . . 
Portuguese: 


Dutch: . „ 

Principal Railways: --- 


Canals: 


Scale of Miles 

600 


THE MATTHEWS-NORTHRUP WORKS, BUFFALO, N.Y. 


C- Comorin* \ C E 

V Colombo^ 


V* MALDJVE 

i ' 8 - 

? (Br.) 


JV 


D 


o 


c 


E 


30 ° 


40° 


50 c 


60° 


70° Longitude 80° East 









































































































































India 


55i 


The East India Company continued to govern India until 
after the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1857 came the 
Sepoy Mutiny, a sudden uprising of the native Government 
soldiers in the northern part of the country. of India 
Bloodily conducted, it was as bloodily suppressed. The mutiny 
disclosed the weakness of company rule and resulted in the 
transfer of all governmental functions to the Crown. Queen 



“The Lion’s Vengeance on the Bengal Tiger” 

A cartoon by Sir John Tenniel which appeared in the English journal Punch for 
August 22, 1857. 


Victoria afterward assumed the title, Empress of India. A 
viceroy, whose seat is the old Mogul capital, Delhi, and the 
officials of the Indian Civil Service administer the affairs of 
about two-thirds of the country. The remainder is ruled by 
native princes under British control. 

Great Britain enforces peace throughout the peninsula, builds 
railways and canals linking every part of it together, stamps out 
the famines and plagues which used to sweep away Home rule 
the inhabitants, and has begun their education in for India 
schools of many grades. All this work tends to foster a sense 
of nationality, something hitherto lacking in India. Educated 
Hindus, familiar with the national and democratic movements 
of the last century in Europe, have begun to voice their aspira¬ 
tions for a united Indian nation. This may come in time. 







552 Expansion of Europe in the Old World 


together with more and more privileges in the way of self- 
government. When we realize, however, that most of the 
Indian people are illiterate, that only a few of them use Eng¬ 
lish, the official language, that old religious hatreds divide them, 
and that the caste system (§ 18) stands in the way of establishing 
a basis of common understanding among them, we can see how 
slow must be the steps by which India will obtain complete 
democracy upon European or American models. 

There is no reason to believe that Great Britain will ever 
voluntarily concede Indian independence. European nations 
Indian cherish their colonial possessions and do not lightly 

independence gi ve them up. No nation has a more profitable 
dependency than Great Britain has in India. She looks to 
India as one of the foremost sources of her food supply, finds in 
India a market for enormous quantities of cotton and iron 
manufactures, and possesses almost a monopoly of India’s sea¬ 
borne trade. The capitalists of Great Britain have also invested 
heavily in Indian railways, factories, and mines, as well as in 
the securities of the Indian government. India is a rich jewel, 
indeed, in the British imperial crown. 

153 . China 

China, at the opening of the nineteenth century, was what it 
had been for three thousand years — an empire with an absolute 
The “ Ceies- ruler, the “Son of Heaven.” He held sway over 
tial Empire ” an enormous area, which included, not only China 
proper, but also Manchuria, Mongolia, Sinkiang, and Tibet. 
Burma, part of Indo-China, and Korea were Chinese tributaries. 
Never before had the “Celestial Empire” been so large and 
populous. 

The rugged mountains and trackless deserts which bound 
three sides of China long shut it off from much intercourse 
Isolation of with the Western world. The proud disposition 
China G f j^ s people, to whom foreigners were only bar¬ 

barians (“foreign devils”), likewise tended to keep them 
isolated. Before the nineteenth century the only Europeans 


China 


553 


\tfho gained an entrance into the “Celestial Empire’’ were a few 
missionaries and traders. The merchants of Portugal estab¬ 
lished themselves at Macao, and those of Holland and Great 
Britain, at Canton. There was also some traffic overland 
between Russia and China. Foreign trade, however, had no 
attraction for the Chinese, 
who discouraged it as far as 
possible. 

The difficulties experi¬ 
enced by merchants in China 
led at length Foreign 
to hostilities aggression 
between that country and 
Great Britain. The British, 
with their modern fleet and 
army, had an easy victory 
and in 1842 compelled the 
Chinese government to open 
additional ports and cede the 
island of Hongkong. Other 
nations now hastened to se¬ 
cure commercial concessions 
in China. Many more ports 
were opened to foreign 
merchants, Europeans were 
granted the right to travel 



Empress-Dowager of China 

A portrait by a Chinese artist. The empress 


in China, and Christian mis- is represented as a goddess of mercy. She 
. . , , , , j stands upon a lotus petal floating on the waves 

sionaries were to be protected of the sea 
in their work among the in¬ 
habitants. But all this made little impression upon perhaps 
the most conservative people in the world. The Chinese re¬ 
mained absolutely hostile to the Western civilization so rudely 
thrust upon them. 

Foreign aggression soon took the form of annexations in 
outlying portions of Chinese territory. We have Annexations 
seen how Great Britain appropriated Burma; 

France, Indo China; and Russia, the Amur district. Meanwhile, 



554 Expansion of Europe in the Old World 



Japan, just beginning her national expansion, looked enviously 
across the sea to Korea, a tributary kingdom of China. The 
Chino-Japanese War (1894-1895) followed. Completely de¬ 
feated, the Chinese had not only to renounce all claim to Korea, 
but also to surrender to Japan the island of Formosa and the 
extreme southern part of Manchuria, including the coveted 
Port Arthur. At this juncture of affairs Russia, Germany, and 

France intervened and in¬ 
duced the Japanese to ac¬ 
cept a money indemnity in 
lieu of territory on the 
mainland. The three Eu¬ 
ropean powers then seized 
several Chinese seaports 
and divided much of the 
country into spheres of 
influence. The partition of 
China seemed at hand. 

But Europe was not to 
have its own way in China. 

A secret so¬ 
ciety called 
the “Boxers,” 
whose members claimed 
to be invulnerable, spread 
rapidly through the provinces and urged war to the death against 
the “foreign devils.” Encouraged by the empress-dowager, 
Tze-hsi, who was regent of China for nearly forty years, the 
“Boxers” murdered many traders and missionaries. The 
foreigners in Peking took refuge within the legations, where 
after a desperate defense they were finally relieved by an inter¬ 
national army composed of European, Japanese, and American 
troops. The allies then made peace with China and promised 
henceforth to respect her territory. They insisted, however, 
on the payment of a large indemnity for the outrages committed 
during the anti-foreign outbreak. 

Events now moved rapidly. Educated Chinese, many of 


The 

“ Boxers,” 

1900 


Sun Yat Sen 


Japan 


555 


whom had studied abroad, saw clearly that their country must 
adopt Western ideas and methods, if it was to remain a great 
power. The demand for thorough reforms in the The Chinese 
government soon became a movement against Revolution, 
the unprogressive Manchu (or Manchurian) 1911-1912 
dynasty, which had ruled China for nearly three hundred years. 
The leader of the movement was Sun Yat Sen, a doctor of medi¬ 
cine and a Christian in religion. A revolution broke out late in 
1911; it spread rapidly throughout the provinces, and in 1912 
led to the abdication of the emperor and the setting up of a 
republican government. 

The Chinese are not one people, for the inhabitants of the 
northern provinces differ from those of the southern provinces 
in physique, speech, and customs. These differ- The Chinese 
ences have always kept the two sections apart, and republics 
since the revolution they have prevented any real unification of 
the country. Civil war has raged between North and South, 
and at the present time there are two Chinese republics, one 
centering in Peking and the other in Canton. Constant struggles 
between ambitious military governors, together with much 
brigandage in the interior districts, have also helped to produce 
unsettled conditions throughout most of China. Patriotic 
Chinese do' not lose heart, however, for they recognize that the 
lessons of self-government cannot be learned in a day. They 
still look forward to the creation of a united and democratic 
nation, able to rule itself and also strong enough to preserve its 
rights and territories against the encroachments of foreign 
powers. 


154 . Japan 

The Japanese Archipelago consists of six large islands and 
over three thousand smaller ones stretching crescent-like off the 
coast of eastern Asia. Because of its generally The Japanese 
mountainous character, little more than one-eighth Archipelago 
of the archipelago can be cultivated. Rice and tea form the 
principal crops, but fruit trees of every kind known to temperate 


556 Expansion of Europe in the Old World 


The Japanese 


climates flourish, and flowers bloom luxuriantly. The deep 
inlets of the coast provide convenient harbors, and the numerous 
rivers, though neither large nor long, supply an abundance of water. 
Below the surface lie considerable deposits of coal and metals. 

The Japanese are descended mainly from 
Koreans and Chinese, who displaced the 
original inhabitants of the 
archipelago. The immigrants 
appear to have reached Japan in the early 
centuries of the Christian era. Except for 
their shorter stature, the Japanese closely 
resemble the Chinese in physique and per¬ 
sonal appearance. They are, however, 
more quick-witted and receptive of new 
ideas than their neighbors on the mainland. 
Other qualities possessed by the Japanese in 
a marked degree include obedience, the re¬ 
sult of many centuries of autocratic govern¬ 
ment ; a martial spirit; and an intense pa¬ 
triotism. “Thou shalt honor the gods and 
love thy country” is the first command¬ 
ment of the national faith. 

The Japanese naturally patterned their 
civilization upon that of China. They 
Japanese adopted a simplified form of 
civilization Chinese writing and took over 
the literature, learning, and art of the “Ce¬ 
lestial Empire.” The moral system of Con¬ 
fucius found ready acceptance in Japan, 
where it strengthened the reverence for parents and the worship 
of ancestors. Buddhism, introduced from China by way of Korea, 
brought new ideas of the nature of the soul, of heaven and hell, 
and of salvation by prayer. It is still the prevailing religion in 
Japan. Like the Chinese, also, the Japanese had an emperor 
(the mikado). He became in time only a puppet emperor, and 
another official (the shogun) usurped the chief functions of 
government. Neither ruler exerted much authority over the 



A Japanese Soldier 
or the Eighteenth 
Century 

After the model in the 
Victoria and Albert Mu¬ 
seum, London. 


Japan 


557 


9V 

% 

1 

ft 




m 


E^ 


nobles (daimios), who oppressed their serfs and waged private 
warfare against one another very much as did their contem¬ 
poraries, the feudal lords of medieval Europe. 

The first European visitors to Japan were Portuguese mer¬ 
chants and Jesuit missionaries, who came in the sixteenth 
century. The Japanese government welcomed European 
them at first, but the growing unpopularity of the intercourse 
foreigners before long resulted in their expulsion Wlth Japan 
from the country. Japan continued to lead a hermit life until 
the middle of the nine¬ 
teenth century. Foreign 
intercourse began in 1853- 
1854, with the arrival of 
an American fleet under 
Commodore M. C. Perry. 

He induced the shogun to 
sign a treaty which opened 
two Japanese ports to 
American ships. The dip¬ 
lomatic ice being thus 
broken, various European 
nations soon negotiated 
commercial treaties with 
Japan. 

Thoughtful Japanese, 
however great their dislike 
of foreigners, The Japanese 
could not fail Revolution 
to recognize the superiority 
of the Western nations in the arts of war and peace. A group of 
reformers, including many prominent daimios, now carried 
through an almost bloodless revolution. As the first step, they 
compelled the shogun to resign his office, thus making the 
mikado 1 the actual as well as nominal sovereign (1867). Most 
of the daimios then voluntarily surrendered their feudal privileges 
(1871). This patriotic act made possible the abolition of serf- 

1 The youthful Mutsuhito, who reigned 1867-1912. 


7 

% 

% 


* 

1* 


m 




Sign Manual and Seal oe Mutsuhito 














































558 Expansion of Europe in the Old World 


dom and the formation of a national army on the basis of 
compulsory military service. Japan afterward secured a written 
constitution, with a parliament of two houses and a cabinet 
responsible to the mikado. He is guided in all important 
matters by a group of nobles, called the “Elder Statesmen,” 
who form the real power behind the throne. 

The revolutionary movement affected almost every aspect of 
Japanese society. Codes of civil, commercial, and criminal 
Europeaniza- law were drawn up to accord with those of western 
tion of Japan Europe. Universities and public schools were 
established upon Occidental models. Railroads and steamship 
lines were multiplied. The abundant water power and cheap 
labor of Japan facilitated the introduction of European methods 
of manufacturing; and machine-made goods began to displace 
the artistic productions of handworkers. Japan thus became a 
modern industrial nation and a competitor of Europe for Asiatic 
trade. 

Once in possession of European arts, sciences, and industries, 
Japan entered upon a career of territorial expansion in eastern 
Expansion of Asia. Her merchants and capitalists wanted 
Japan opportunities for money-making abroad; above 

all, her rapidly increasing population required new regions 
suitable for colonization beyond the narrow limits of the archi¬ 
pelago. As we have learned, the Chino-Japanese War brought 
Korea under Japanese influence and added Formosa to the 
empire. Just ten years later Japan and Russia clashed over the 
disposition of Manchuria and the Liaotung Peninsula. The 
Russo-Japanese War seemed a conflict between a giant and a 
pygmy, but the inequality of the Japanese in numbers and 
resources was more than made up by their preparedness for the 
conflict, by their irresistible bravery, and by the strategic 
genius which their generals displayed. After much bloody 
fighting by land and sea, both sides accepted the suggestion of 
President Roosevelt to arrange terms of peace. The treaty, as 
signed at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, recognized the claims 
of Japan in Korea, gave to Japan a lease of the Liaotung Penin¬ 
sula, including Port Arthur, and provided for the evacuation of 


































































' 
















' 

' 


















t 







. 






















The Opening-up and Partition of Oceania 559 

Manchuria by both contestants. Russia also ceded to Japan 
the southern half of the island of Sakhalin. 

The World War, in which Japan was enrolled on the side of 
the Allies, gave her almost a free hand in the Far East. She 
used the opportunity thus presented to strengthen j ap an as a 
her position in southern Manchuria and eastern sreat power 
Mongolia. Korea, shortly before the war, had been annexed 
to the Japanese Empire under the name of Chosen. Japan is 
now a continental power, with extensive and valuable holdings 
on the mainland of Asia. Her insular possessions have also 
been increased as the result of her mandate over the former 
German colonies in the Pacific, north of the equator. 

155. The Opening-up and Partition of Oceania 

The term Oceania in its widest sense applies to all the islands 
of the Pacific. These fall into a continental group, which 
unquestionably once formed a part of Asia, and an islands of 
oceanic group, for which no such connection can the Pacific 
be stated. The principal continental islands include the 
Japanese Archipelago, the Philippines, and part of the Malay 
Archipelago (Sumatra, Java, and Borneo). The principal 
oceanic islands include Celebes, New Guinea, Australia (with 
which may be associated Tasmania), and New Zealand. There 
are also a vast number of islands and islets, either volcanic or 
coralline in origin, scattered over the Pacific. 

The peoples of the Pacific exhibit a wide variety of culture, 
ranging from the savage natives of Australia to the semi- 
civilized Filipinos, Malays, and Polynesians. The Peoples of 
first human settlement of what are now the con- the Pacific 
tinental islands doubtless took place at a remote period, before 
they were separated from Asia. The earliest emigrants walked 
to them dryshod. On the other hand, the oceanic islands could 
only have been occupied by man after the art of navigation had 
developed sufficiently to permit long journeys by water. Their 
inhabitants, at the time of European discovery, were remarkable 
navigators, who sailed up and down the Pacific and even ven- 


560 Expansion of Europe in the Old World 


tured into the icy Antarctic. No evidence exists, however, 
that they even once sighted the coast of America. 

Magellan discovered the Philippines on his voyage of cir¬ 
cumnavigation (§ 97), and for more than three hundred and 
Spain in the fifty years they belonged to Spain. The conquest 
Philippines 0 f th e islands was essentially a peaceful mission¬ 
ary enterprise. Spanish friars accomplished a remarkable 
work in carrying Christianity to the natives. These converted 
Filipinos are the only large mass of Asiatics who have adopted 
the Christian religion in modern times. 

The United States took over the Philippines in 1898, as a 
result of the Spanish-American War, and adopted an enlight- 
The United ened policy toward the inhabitants. A constabu- 
States in the lary or police force, made up of native soldiers and 
Philippines officered by white men, was organized to maintain 
order. The agricultural lands belonging to the friars were 
purchased for the benefit of the people. Hundreds of American 
school teachers were introduced to train Filipino teachers in 
English and modern methods of instruction. Large appropria¬ 
tions were made for roads, harbors, and other improvements. 
True to democratic traditions, the United States also set up a 
Filipino legislature, which at the present time is entirely elected 
by the natives. But home rule does not satisfy them; they 
want complete independence. The separation movement has 
gained ground rapidly since the World War, which stirred the 
nationalist longings of the Filipinos as of the Koreans, Hindus, 
and Egyptians. 

The possessions which Portugal acquired in the Malay Archi¬ 
pelago were seized by Holland in the seventeenth century 
Holland in (§ XI 5). All the islands, except British North 
the Malay Borneo, the Portuguese part of Timor, and the 
Archipelago eastern half of New Guinea, belong to the Dutch. 1 
They were transferred at the end of the eighteenth century from 
the Dutch East India Company to the royal government. The 
Dutch have met the usual difficulties of Europeans ruling sub¬ 
ject peoples, but their authority seems to be now well established 

1 See the map on page 397. 



THE PACIFIC OCEAN 



BRITISH 


FRENCH 

DUTCH 





PORTUGUESE 

JAPANESE 

AMERICAN 


















































■ . . • ■ • • 












































Australia and New Zealand 561 

throughout the archipelago. The government is fairly enlight¬ 
ened, and considerable progress has been made in educating the 
natives and in raising their economic condition. Although 
Holland freely opens her possessions to traders of other nations, 
Dutch merchants continue to control the profitable commerce of 
the islands. 

Geographical knowledge of the smaller Pacific islands dates 
from Captain Cook’s discoveries in the eighteenth century 
(§ 124), but their partition among European powers Melanesia 
has been completed only in the twentieth century. Micronesia, 
Most of them have been annexed by Great Britain and Pol y nesia 
and France. The United States controls Guam, part of Samoa, 
and the Hawaiian Islands. The German possessions in the 
Pacific were taken over by the Allies shortly after the outbreak 
of the World War. 

156. Australia and New Zealand 

Australia deserves its rank as a separate continent. In area 
it equals three-fourths of Europe or one-third of North America. 
The characteristic features of Australian geography Australian 
are the slightly indented coast, the lack of navi- geography 
gable rivers communicating with the interior, the central des¬ 
ert, the absence of active volcanoes or snow-capped mountains, 
the generally level surface, and the low altitude. Australia is 
the most isolated of all inhabited continents, while the two 
large islands of New Zealand, twelve hundred miles south¬ 
east, are still more remote from the center of the world’s 
activities. 

Much of Australia lies in the temperate zone and therefore 
offers a favorable field for white settlement. Captain Cook, 
on the first of his celebrated voyages, raised the Settlement 
British flag over the island continent. Colonization of Australia 
began with the founding of Sydney on the coast of New South 
Wales. For many years Australia served as a penal station, to 
which the British transported the convicts who had been 
previously sent to America. More substantial colonists fol- 


562 Expansion of Europe in the Old World 


lowed, especially after the introduction of sheep-farming and 
the discovery of gold in the nineteenth century. They 
settled chiefly on the eastern and southern coasts, where the 
climate is cool and there is plenty of water and rich pasture 
land. 



-Tasman, 1642-1643, .1644 A.D-I ^! Sobafrt /l Aa'MAJ llA-— 

- Charles.Sturt, 1828-1846 A.D. 

_John McDowell Stuart, 1858-1862 A.D. 

_Burke and Wills, 1860-1861 A.D. 

♦ John Forrest, 1869-1874 A.D. 


The Australian Commonwealth 


New South Wales, the original colony, had two daughter 
colonies, Victoria and Queensland. Two other colonies — South 
The Austra- Australia and Western Australia — were founded 
lian Common- directly by emigrants from Great Britain. All 
wea t , 1900 these states, together with Tasmania, have now 
united into the Australian Commonwealth. This federation 
follows American models in its written constitution, its senate 
and house of representatives, and its high (or supreme) court. 
A governor-general, sent from England, represents the British 
Crown. The Commonwealth, however, is entirely self-govern¬ 
ing except in foreign affairs. 











Occident and Orient 


563 

Australia is essentially a pastoral land, and the products of 
its flocks and herds form the chief element of its wealth. Wool 
has always been a leading export, and with im- Economic 
proved methods of refrigeration beef and mutton Australia 
have become important items of overseas trade. The value 
of agricultural products is now more than twice that of the mines, 
though the original prosperity of Australia was due to the gold 
discoveries there. Forests and fisheries make up important 
national assets. Manufacturing and commerce have increased 
fapidly in recent years. The development of Australia, from a 
small military station and penal colony to a self-governing 
dominion of five and a half million people, must rank among the 
great achievements of the past century. Its future is immense, 
for it has natural resources capable of supporting many times 
its present population. 

The temperate climate, abundant rainfall, and luxuriant 
vegetation of New Zealand soon attracted British settlers, 
who now number more than a million. The coun- The D 0m i n i 0n 
try was raised in 1907 from the rank of a colony of New 
to that of a dominion, thus taking a place beside Zealand 
Australia among the self-governing divisions of the British 
Empire. It cannot fail to become a rich, populous, and pros¬ 
perous country when the Pacific Ocean is opened up to the 
civilizing influences which have hitherto centered in the Medi¬ 
terranean and the Atlantic. 

157. Occident and Orient 

The World War and the peace treaties remade the European 
map on the basis of national self-determination (§145). Old 
states were reduced or enlarged, new states were National self _ 
formed, and oppressed or subject peoples received determination 
their freedom according to this principle. It could m the ° nent 
not be recognized in Europe without arousing demands for its 
recognition outside of Europe. The imperialistic powers are 
now confronted with a nationalist movement in one dependency 
after another, among black and yellow peoples, as well as white 

































Occident and Orient 


5^5 


peoples, and among Moslems, Brahmanists, and Buddhists, as 
well as Christians. Great Britain, so far, has done most to 
comply with the demands of the nationalists. She ended her 
protectorate over Egypt in 1922 and proclaimed that coun¬ 
try a sovereign state. Iraq, which she supervises under a 
mandate, has been made a kingdom under an Arab ruler and 
with a liberal constitution. The Government of India Act, 
passed by the British Parliament in 1919, accords India 
representative institutions. It does not completely satisfy the 
extreme nationalists, who dream of complete Indian independ¬ 
ence. The nationalist movement is also penetrating into French 
Indo-China, into Korea, and into the Philippines. 

Radical socialism, or Bolshevism, has not only triumphed in 
Russia since the war, but has also spread widely in the Orient. 
The Soviet government started out by promising Bolshevism in 
the former Asiatic subjects of Russia complete free- the orient 
dom to set up states of their own. This liberal policy did not 
last long. It was soon modified by the requirement that the new 
states accept Bolshevism and affiliate closely with the govern¬ 
ment at Moscow. The result is seen to-day in the existence 
throughout the Caucasus, Siberia, and central Asia of a large 
number of sovietized provinces and so-called “republics.” 
These are as much under Russian domination as they were in 
the days of the tsars. The Bolshevist propaganda of com¬ 
munism and atheism, which seeks to undermine the foundations 
of European civilization, also commends itself to the anti- 
European elements in such countries as Persia, Afghanistan, 
India, China, and the East Indies. Like the nationalist move¬ 
ment, with which it is often associated, Bolshevism promises to 
complicate the future relation of Occident and Orient. 

As far as European expansion has been truly a racial conquest, 
it must be permanent. The intrusive whites in South Africa, 
Australia, New Zealand, and the two Americas Future of 
have either exterminated the aboriginal inhabit- imperialism 
ants or else have imposed on them their languages, laws, cus¬ 
toms, and religion, together with (in Latin America) a consider¬ 
able strain of their blood. European expansion in the tropical 


566 Expansion of Europe in the Old World 


parts of Africa, Asia, and Oceania means merely political 
conquest, which has no necessary permanence. In the long run 
— how long a run no one can say — dependent countries not 
inhabited by savage or barbarous tribes seem likely to secure 
home rule and, finally, complete freedom. 

The relations between Europeans and non-Europeans will 
probably be influenced more and more by the factor of religion. 
The factor We sometimes forget that Christianity has as yet 
of religion made little impression on the civilized world out¬ 
side of Europe and America. We do not always realize how 
numerous are the Moslems of Africa, Asia, and Oceania, the 
Brahmanists (or Hinduists) in India, and the Buddhists in 
China, Japan, and other Oriental countries. 

Religion, through its use by ambitious rulers or peoples, may 
assume political importance. Islam has always been feared 
Pan- in this respect, because Moslems are encouraged to 

Isiamism convert unbelievers by force, as well as by peaceful 

persuasion. It is a fanatical, aggressive religion, which gains 
every year millions of new followers, not only among the crowded 
populations of Asia, but also among the negroes of Central 
Africa. Both yellow men and black men respond to its teach¬ 
ings. Its power is persistent, for no people, once converted to 
Islam, has ever accepted another faith. The World War pro¬ 
duced an immense stirring among Moslems. Spain had trouble 
in Morocco, France in Syria, and Great Britain in Egypt and 
India, while all the European powers have been faced by a 
revived and aggressive Turkey. There has even been a move¬ 
ment to bring together the many Moslem sects, so as to oppose 
a united front to Christendom. This movement is called 
Pan-Islamism. It testifies to a new sense of unity among 
Moslems, who resent more and more their control by Christian 
powers. 

The relations between Europeans and non-Europeans are 
further affected by the factor of color. Classified by races, the 
The factor world’s population may be roughly estimated as 
of color 800,000,000 for the Caucasian or White Race; 

600,000,000 for the Mongoloid or Yellow Race; and 200,000,000 


Occident and Orient 


567 

for the Negroid or Black Race. While these figures are only 
approximate, they do show that the yellows and the blacks 
together equal and possibly outnumber the whites. 

The Black and Yellow races have not remained within their 
continents of origin during the past four hundred years. The 
forced migration of Africans practically ended with Expansion of 
the abolition of negro slavery and the slave trade the Black and 
in the nineteenth century, but the voluntary migra- YeUow races 
tion of Asiatics shows a marked tendency to increase. The 
overflow of the teeming populations of India, Indo-China, China, 
and Japan upon the Philippines, the Malay Archipelago, Aus¬ 
tralia, the islands of the Pacific, South Africa, and the North 
and South American coasts seems destined to raise race ques¬ 
tions of tremendous import in the future. 

The World War, in which both yellow men and black men 
participated, has heightened their racial consciousness. It has 
made them less ready than before to accept the Racial 
white man’s claim to superiority on the ground consciousness 
of color. Religious hatreds and Bolshevist propaganda have 
contributed to the same result, along the great borderland of the 
Occident and Orient from northern Africa to the interior of 
Asia and still farther east in China and Japan. 

Peaceful intercourse between the Orient and that Occident 
to which America belongs as much as Europe, depends more 
than ever on racial concord. If the League of Racial 
Nations or some similar organization is to be sue- concord 
cessful, white men, yellow men, and black men must cooperate 
in the task of making a better world. Not the popular refrain 
“East is East and West is West,” but the Golden Rule and 
the saying attributed to the Chinese Confucius, “All men 
between the four seas are brothers,” express the true spirit of 
modern internationalism. 


Studies 

1. “ Europe has imposed itself upon the world.” What does this 
statement mean? 2. “ Europe to-day is no more than a portion of 
the European world.” Comment on this statement. 3. What parts 


COLONIAL POSSESSIONS OF EUROPEAN POWERS 


568 Expansion of Europe in the Old World 


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THE WOl 



British 

French 




Italian 

Danish 


Dutch 


Japan i 














































D POWERS 



Belgian 


Portuguese 

Spanish 


United 

States 


Chinese 


Russian 























































Occident and Orient 


569 


of the Old World are occupied by Anglo-Saxon peoples? by Latin 
peoples? by Slavic peoples? 4. What is the origin of the names 
Liberia, Rhodesia, Siberia, Philippines, Tasmania, and New Zealand? 
5. Account for the long delay in the partition of Africa. 6. Show how 
Africa has become an “ annex of Europe.” 7. Trace the routes fol¬ 
lowed by the Cape-to-Cairo and Trans-Siberian railways. 8. Look 
up in an encyclopedia accounts of the negro republic of Liberia and the 
“ empire ” of Abyssinia. 9. Why has the Suez Canal been called 
the “ spinal cord ” of the British Empire? 10. Distinguish between 
the Near East and the Far East, as these expressions are commonly 
used. 11. What possessions in India are still kept by Portugal and 
France (map between pages 550-551)? 12. Show that the Chino- 

Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars contributed to the awakening of 
China. 13. Compare the Europeanization of Japan in the nine¬ 
teenth century with that of Russia in the eighteenth century. 

14. Why has Japan been called “ the Great Britain of the Far East ”? 

15. Look up in a dictionary the meaning of the names Melanesia, 

Micronesia, and Polynesia. 16. Why are the Hawaiian Islands 
called the “ crossroads of the Pacific ”? 17. Discuss briefly some of 

the problems of contemporary imperialism. 18. How have Oriental 
countries been affected by nationalist movements and Bolshevist agita¬ 
tion? 19. Comment on the significance in contemporary interna¬ 
tional politics of the factor of religion and the color factor. 20. Trace 
on the map (facing page 658) the areas in the Old World that are 
Christian, Moslem, and Buddhist, respectively. 


CHAPTER XVII 


EXPANSION OF EUROPE IN THE NEW WORLD 


158 . Latin-American Independence 


European expansion in America differs markedly from Euro¬ 
pean expansion in Africa and Asia. Africa has been subjected 
Europe and and partitioned by Europe, but its savage and 
America barbarous peoples have not been Europeanized 
either in blood, language, or institutions. Asia, within recent 
decades, has begun to accept Occidental sciences and inventions, 
but nothing indicates that Hindus, Chinese, Japanese, and 
other Orientals will abandon their ancient culture. America, 
however, has become an annex of Europe. Anglo-America 
(Canada and the United States) is European in blood, except 
for the negroes, and completely European in speech, religion, 
and political and social life. Latin America, though partly 
Indian or half-Indian in population, has a European civilization. 
Between the New World of 1500 and the New World of 1900 
how great the contrast! 

Eighteen independent nations in the New World developed 
from Spanish colonies. Brazil sprang from Portuguese settle- 
Latin ment. Haiti had a mixed Spanish and French 

America origin. All of them inherited Romance languages 
(Spanish, Portuguese, French), the Roman Catholic faith, and 
Latin culture. They constitute the Latin America of to-day. 1 

The motives which led to Spanish colonization in America 
may be summed up in the three words “gospel, glory, and gold/’ 


1 Omitting Haiti, as partly French, they may be called still more definitely the 
Hispanic-American nations, from Hispania, the Roman name of the Iberian Penin¬ 
sula. 


570 


Latin-American Independence 


57i 


Missionaries sought converts; warriors sought conquests; and 
adventurers sought wealth. Together, they created for Spain 
an empire greater in extent than any that the The Spanish 
world had ever known before. After the middle coiomes 
of the sixteenth century homeseekers also came to the colonies, 
but never in such numbers as to crowd out the Indian population. 
Intermixture between the races soon became common, resulting 
in the half-breeds called “mestizos.” Although the white 
element remained in control of public affairs, the racial founda¬ 
tion of most of the Spanish colonies was Indian. The fact is 
important, for the large proportion of imperfectly civilized 
Indians and half-breeds, together with the negroes who were 
soon introduced as slaves, tended to retard the progress of the 
colonies. 

Spain governed her colonies in the New World for her own 
benefit. She crippled their trade by requiring the inhabitants 
to buy only Spanish goods and to sell only to The yoke 
Spaniards. She prohibited such colonial manu- of s P ain 
factures as might compete with those at home. She filled all 
the offices in Church and State with Spaniards born in the 
mother country, to the exclusion of those born in the colonies 
(creoles). She retained the Inquisition, hated by everybody; 
imposed a censorship of books and the press; and rigidly lim¬ 
ited education. All this restrictive system became more burden¬ 
some as time went on. By the end of the eighteenth century 
most Spanish-Americans wanted self-government, and some of 
them wanted complete independence. 

The stirring story of the American Revolution and the founda¬ 
tion of a great republic based on democratic principles spread 
through the Spanish colonies. French translations Example of 
of the Declaration of Independence and Spanish the United 
translations of the Constitution of the United States States 
soon found their way southward. One of the revolutionary 
leaders exalted Washington as a hero “worthy of the admiration 
of our age and of the generations to come,” and another leader, 
the famous Bolivar, described himself as the Washington of 
South America. The example of the United States also led to 


572 Expansion of Europe in the New World 

the adoption of the federative system of government in the first 
republican constitutions of Mexico, Central America, and several 
South American countries. 

Even before 1789 some Spanish-Americans of the intellectual 
class had become acquainted with the writings of Montesquieu, 
Influence Voltaire, Rousseau, and the other French “ philoso- 

of France phers ” (§ 112). A Spanish version of Rousseau’s 

Social Contract enjoyed a wide circulation, thus making known 
the new gospel of popular sovereignty and the rights of man. 

The colonists not only 
read French books, but 
also watched with 
growing interest the 
progress of the Rev¬ 
olution in France. 
After their own strug¬ 
gle for independence 
began, they made 
“ Liberty, Equality, 
Fraternity” their 
watchwords, took the 
liberty cap for their 
emblem, and out of 
their masonic lodges 
formed secret revo¬ 
lutionary societies 
after French models. 
France, as well as the United States, gave them lessons in liberty. 

Latin-American independence was closely bound up with 
events in Europe. Napoleon Bonaparte, in his efforts to extend 
Revolt against French sway over the Continent, overthrew the 
Spam Bourbon monarchy in Spain and seated his own 

brother Joseph on the Spanish throne. The colonists refused to 
recognize this “intruder king,” as they called Joseph, and set 
up practically independent states throughout Spanish America. 
Ferdinand VII, who returned to Spain after the downfall of 
Napoleon (§ 139), tried by force of arms to subdue the revolting 



Simon Bolivar 

A medallion by David d’Angers, 1832. 






















































































































. 










































South America 


573 


colonists, but they had now tasted the sweets of liberty and 
they would not accept again the yoke of Spain. The wars for 
independence continued in one part or another of Spanish 
America for more than a decade. Their greatest hero is Simon 
Bohvafr, who, in addition to freeing his native Venezuela, helped 
to free the countries now known as Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, 
and Peru. Five nations, whom he snatched from the rule of 
Spain, hold him in grateful remembrance as the Liberator. The 
United States followed the struggle with sympathetic eyes and 
sent commissioners to establish commercial relations with the 
revolting colonies. Great Britain also took an interest in them 
and helped them with money, ships, and munitions of war. 
The Spanish government finally withdrew its troops in 1826, 
but many years passed before it consented to recognize the 
independence of the colonies. 

The people of Brazil also severed the ties uniting them to 
the mother country. They set up an independent empire in 
1822, with Dom Pedro, the oldest son of the Revolt 
Portuguese king, as its first ruler. He abdicated against 
nine years later in favor of his infant son. Brazil Portugal 
prospered under the benevolent sway of the second Dom Pedro, 
who was the last monarch to occupy an American throne. 

159. South America 

South America, at the close of the wars for independence, 
contained six Spanish-speaking states, namely, “Great Colom¬ 
bia,” established by Bolivar, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, South Ameri- 
Argentina, and Paraguay. These were soon in- can republics 
creased to nine by the secession of Uruguay from Argentina 
and Brazil, and the break-up of “Great Colombia” into Colom¬ 
bia, Ecuador, and Venezuela. The nine states, thus formed, 
have continued in existence to the present day. All of them 
promptly became republics, with liberal constitutions that had 
much to say about liberty, justice, and the rights of man. 
Brazil also became a republic, as recently as 1889. 

The republics which now exist throughout South America are 


574 Expansion of Europe in the New World 


toward 

democracy 


either unitary or federal in type. Under the first come Colom¬ 
bia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay; 
Unitary and under the second come (to use the official desig- 
federai nations) the United States of Venezuela, the Argen- 

repubiics tine Republic, and the United States of Brazil. 

In the unitary republics the political divisions are mere admin¬ 
istrative departments, as in France, and the chief executive of 
each is usually appointed by the national president. In the 
federal republics the political divisions are self-governing states, 
like the commonwealths of the American Union. Each elects 
its own governor and other officials, has its own judiciary, and 
makes its own laws in all matters not reserved by the constitu¬ 
tion to the nation as a whole. 

Revolutions, civil wars, and dictatorships characterized the 
history of nearly all the states, for a full half-century after 
Progress independence. This situation has lasted until our 
own day in tropical Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, 
Peru, and Bolivia, and in subtropical Paraguay. 
No one of them is a genuine democracy. Their population 
consists largely of Indians, half-breeds, and negroes, quite 
unfitted for the responsibilities of citizenship. European 
immigrants and European capital alike avoid these countries, 
where the climate (except as modified by altitude and coastal 
currents) is depressing and where political conditions are so 
unsettled. The temperate-zone states — Chile, Argentina, 
Uruguay, — with an invigorating climate, a population more 
white than colored, and a constant influx of foreign capital 
and foreign immigrants, have made by far the greatest advance 
in democratic government during the past fifty years. 

The most important states of South America are Argentina, 
Brazil, and Chile. These three “A-B-C” powers — to use 
The “ A-B-C ” their popular designation — maintain especially 
combination friendly relations. The ties between Argentina 
and Chile have been much strengthened in recent years by the 
adjustment of their boundary disputes and also by the comple¬ 
tion of the Trans-Andean Railroad. Brazil, the largest of the 
Latin-American states, naturally makes the third member of the 















































































t 


South America 


575 


“A-B-C ” combination. This is not a formal alliance, though 
Latin Americans look forward to a time when the three nations, 
acting together, may serve in some degree as a counterpoise to 
the United States and thus set up in the New World the Euro¬ 
pean principle of a “balance of power.” 

South America has almost limitless resources. It produces 
a greater variety of plants useful to man than any other quarter 
of the globe. Tropical fruits grow abundantly Natural 
in the equatorial regions, together with cotton, resources 
sugar cane, coffee, cacao, and tobacco. Cereals of every de¬ 
scription flourish in the sub-tropical and temperate areas, and 
cattle, sheep, and horses thrive on the boundless pampas of 
Argentina. Rubber, medicinal products (cocoa, cinchona bark), 
dye-woods, and timber of extraordinary hardness and durability 
come from the forests of Brazil and adjacent countries. Many 
valuable minerals are found in the lofty Cordilleran range, 
besides asphalt in Venezuela and extensive deposits of nitrate 
of soda in Chile. 

The development of this wealth in mines, forests, and soil 
must for a long time absorb the energies of South American 
peoples. Their economic progress has been slow Economic 
for several reasons. Owing to the scanty popula- conditi <>ns 
tion, surplus labor which might be employed in factories is 
altogether lacking. There is a similar lack of capital, for wealth 
takes chiefly the form of large plantations and cattle ranches. 
Furthermore, few deposits of coal and iron, those essentials of 
modern industry, are available. Consequently, South America 
will doubtless continue, as in the past, to produce mainly raw 
materials and to import manufactured articles. It offers an ever- 
expanding market for textiles, iron and steel wares, machinery, 
and general merchandise, and needs also the services of an army 
of engineers and business experts to develop its industries. 

Large sums have recently been loaned by foreign financiers 
to South American governments, and still larger Foreign 
sums have been invested in South American rail- loans and 
ways, banks, mines, and plantations. Thus the investments 
remarkable Trans-Andean Railway, linking Buenos Aires in 


576 Expansion of Europe in the New World 


Argentina with Valparaiso and Santiago in Chile, was completed 
in 1910 only with funds supplied by New York bankers. Such 
investments may be expected to increase as political conditions 
in South America become stabilized. 

South America is very thinly settled. The population of 
about half the continent, excluding the most inaccessible regions, 
Foreign scarcely exceeds what it was four centuries ago. 

immigration Brazil, whose area is greater than that of the United 
States (exclusive of Alaska), could contain all the world’s in¬ 
habitants and not be more populous than Belgium. Foreign 
immigration has increased within recent years, especially into 
Brazil and Argentina. The newcomers from Portugal, Spain, 
Italy, and France blend readily with peoples, like themselves, 
of Latin origin. The Germans, a numerous group, tend to 
form communities where they speak their own language and 
keep socially aloof from the natives. Englishmen and Ameri¬ 
cans are comparatively few in number. Japanese have estab¬ 
lished themselves in Brazil and other states, and Chinese are 
found on the northwest coast of South America. 

White peoples, multiplying rapidly during the last century, 
have filled nearly the whole of the United States and much of 
The White Canada. They are filling other parts of the 
Race in South temperate zone, such as South Africa, Australia, 
and New Zealand. As the growth of numbers 
continues and population presses more relentlessly than ever 
upon food supply, white peoples will turn more and more to 
South America. It is the only extensive region on the globe 
remaining greatly underpopulated. It contains enormous tracts 
capable of settlement. Its temperate area comprises not only 
the pastoral and arable territory of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, 
southern Brazil, and southern Paraguay, but also those alpine 
regions of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, which, by 
reason of great elevation, reach literally out of the tropics. All 
this part of the world may be expected to receive an increasing 
white immigration as political conditions become more settled 
in South America and good roads, railways, and steamship lines 
bring the continent out of an age-long seclusion. 


Central America and Mexico 


577 


Statistics of Latin America 1 


States 

Area 
(In square 
miles) 

Population 

Capital 

Independ¬ 

ence 

Declared 

Argentina 

IA53AI9 

8,698,516 

Buenos Aires 

1816 

Bolivia 

5I4A55 

2,889,970 

Sucre 

1825 

Brazil 

3,275,510 

30,645,296 

Rio de Janeiro 

1822 

Chile 

289,829 

3,754,723 

Santiago 

1818 

Colombia 

440,846 

5,855,077 

Bogota 

1813 

Costa Rica 

23,000 

468,373 

San Jos6 

1821 

Cuba 

44,215 

2,889,004 

Havana 

1898 

Dominican Republic 

19,332 

897,405 

Santo Domingo 

1844 

Ecuador 

116,000 

2,000,000 

Quito 

1811 

Guatemala 

48,290 

2,003,579 

Guatemala City 

1821 

Haiti 

10,204 

2,500,000 

Port-au-Prince 

1804 

Honduras 

44,275 

637,114 

Tegucigalpa 

1821 

Mexico 

767,198 

17,000,000 

Mexico City 

1821 

Nicaragua 

49,200 

638,119 

Managua 

1821 

Panama 

32,380 

401,428 

Panama 

» 1903 

Paraguay 

75,673 

1,000,000 

Asuncion 

1811 

Peru 

722,461 

4,620,201 

Lima 

1821 

Salvador 

13,183 

1,501,000 

San Salvador 

1821 

Uruguay 

72,153 

1,494,953 

Montevideo 

1828 

Venezuela 

398,594 

2,411,952 

Caracas 

1811 


160. Central America and Mexico 

The Spanish dependencies in Central America declared their 
independence in 1821, and two years later formed a federation. 
It soon broke up into the five little republics of The central 
Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras, 2 Nicaragua, and American 
Costa Rica. Subsequent attempts to restore fed- repu 
eral unity have been unsuccessful. They still maintain a sep¬ 
arate existence, often vexed by factional strife and revolutions. 
The recent secession of Panama from Colombia has added a 
sixth republic to their number. The population of Central 
America is small, far smaller, apparently, than before the ar¬ 
rival of the Spaniards. The vast majority of the inhabitants 

1 The figures for area and population are in some cases only approximate. 

2 British Honduras is a Crown colony of Great Britain. 













578 Expansion of Europe in the New World 


The 

Mexican 

republic 


are of mixed Indian and Spanish blood, the Indian element 
predominating everywhere except in Costa Rica. 

Mexico also secured independence in 1821, only to enter 
upon a long period of disorder. In 1861 Benito Juarez — a 
full-blooded Indian — became president. He pro¬ 
ceeded to take over all the property of the Roman 
Catholic Church in Mexico, to suppress the mon¬ 
asteries, and to repudiate the public debt, which was largely 
held in Europe. These proceedings gave Napoleon III a 
pretext for interfering in Mexican affairs, at a time when the 
United States was in the throes of the Civil War. The French 
quickly overran much of the country and set up the archduke 
Maximilian, brother of Francis Joseph I, as emperor. For a 
while he held sway over about two-thirds of Mexico, while the 
Juarists, as the Mexican patriots were called, maintained them¬ 
selves in the remoter provinces. Maximilian’s power rested on 
the bayonets of his foreign soldiery. After the close of the Civil 
War, the United States protested vigorously to Napoleon III 
against the presence of the French in Mexico and backed up 
its words by sending troops to the Rio Grande. Partly be¬ 
cause of this action and also because of his growing fear of 
Prussia, Napoleon III withdrew his forces from Mexico. Maxi¬ 
milian was soon captured by the Juarists, who executed him as 
a rebel against the lawful government. 

Ten years later Porfirio Diaz, an able lieutenant of Juarez, 
made himself supreme in Mexico. His title of president only 
Mexico veiled the real dictatorship which he exercised. It 

under Diaz, was the policy of Diaz to repress disorder, enforce 

1877-1911 

the law, foster industry and railroad building, 
encourage immigration, place the national credit on a sound 
basis, and improve elementary and higher education. Mexico 
has never had a firmer hand at the helm than that of Porfirio 
Diaz. He gave the country peace and opened its wondrous 
resources to the rest of the world, but he failed to lighten the 
heavy burdens that were resting on the “peons,” as farm 
laborers are called in Mexico. Their successful revolution in 
1911 compelled his withdrawal to Spain. 


The West Indies 


579 


The expulsion of Diaz was followed by civil conflict between 
rival generals and their followers. It has now died down in 
Mexico, leaving General Elias Calles as the recog- Mexico after 
nized president. The problems before him are Diaz 
difficult. Mexico needs not only a stable government, but also 
land reforms which will raise the “peons” from their condition 
of practical serfdom on the estates of great proprietors to that 
of free men. Whether these problems will be solved remains 
to be seen. Until they are solved, Mexico is likely to be a 
land where revolutions are frequent. 


161 . The West Indies 


Geography 


The islands which Columbus discovered and named the 
West Indies form the summits of a submerged mountain chain. 
Their total area scarcely exceeds that of Great 
Britain. They are exceptionally fertile, and some 
of them are exceptionally healthy, among tropical regions, for 
white settlement. The entire archipelago is divided into the 
Bahamas, the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, and 
Porto Rico), and the Lesser Antilles. 

The aboriginal West Indians (Caribs) soon disappeared almost 
completely, in consequence of brutal treatment by the Spaniards. 
Their place as slaves was taken by Africans, who , x . 
were imported in great numbers for three hundred 
years. Negroes still comprise a large majority of the in¬ 
habitants. The abolition of slavery and the slave trade 
in the nineteenth century led to the introduction of Asiatics, 
including many Chinese and East Indian coolies. English, 
French, Spaniards, and other Europeans early found their 
way into the islands, but very few Americans have settled 
there. 

The West Inches fill a conspicuous place in the history of 
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Their geographical 
position between two continents made them the Higt 
scene of sea-fights and land-fights innumerable 
between the French and British, who were then disputing the 



S8o 















































































































The United States 


581 

supremacy of the New World. The islands were equally 
prominent in the intervals of peace, for in those days they 
supplied the world with sugar. The millionaires of the eight¬ 
eenth century were the owners of West India sugar-cane planta¬ 
tions. A long period of depression followed the abolition of 
slavery and the slave trade, which cut down the supply of cheap 
labor, while at the same time beet sugar began to be extensively 
produced in Europe. The completion of the Panama Canal 
places the West Indies on the world’s great trade routes and 
promises to restore much of their former prosperity. 

Most of the smaller West India islands are still held by Great 
Britain, France, and Holland. Haiti, once a French possession, 
declared its independence at the time of the Revo- Political 
lution and successfully resisted Napoleon’s efforts affiliations 
at reconquest. The two negro republics of Haiti and Santo 
Domingo now divide the island between them. Cuba, thanks 
to American intervention during the Spanish-American War, 
also forms a republic. The United States took Porto Rico 
from Spain in 1898 and in 1917 purchased from Denmark the 
three islands of St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix. Their 
acquisition reflects the increased importance of the West Indies 
to the American people. 

162 . The United States 

The expansion of the United States beyond the limits fixed 
by the Treaty of Paris in 1783 (§122) began with the purchase 
of the Louisiana territory between the Mississippi The Louisiana 

and the Rocky Mountains. This immense region, Purchase, 

1803 

originally claimed by France in virtue of La 
Salle’s discoveries, had passed to Spain at the close of the Seven 
Years’ War and had been reacquired for France by Napoleon 
Bonaparte. The French emperor, about to renew his conflict 
with Great Britain, realized that he could not defend Louisiana 
against the mistress of the seas. Rather than make a forced 
present of the country to Great Britain, he sold it to the United 
States for the paltry sum of $15,000,000. 


582 Expansion of Europe in the New World 

The possession of Louisiana gave the United States an outlet 
upon the Gulf of Mexico. This was greatly extended by the 
Acquisitions, purchase of Florida from Spain in 1819 and the 
1803-1867 annexation of Texas in 1845. The settlement of 
the dispute with Great Britain as to the Oregon country, the 
Mexican Cession, and the Gadsden Purchase, brought the United 
States to the Pacific. Every part of this western territory is 
now linked by transcontinental railroads with the Mississippi 
Valley and the Atlantic-facing states. 

Alaska had been a Russian province since Bering’s voyages 
in the eighteenth century § 124). Russia, however, never 
Purchase of realized the value of her distant dependency and 
Alaska, 1867 [ n x g5y sold ft to the United States for $7,200,000. 
Since then Americans have taken from Alaska in gold alone 
many times the original cost of the territory. Its resources in 
coal, lumber, agricultural land, and fisheries are also very great, 
though as yet little has been done to develop them. 

In the last decade of the nineteenth century the United 
States began to secure possessions overseas. The Hawaiian 
Acquisitions, Islands, lying about two thousand miles off the 
1867-1917 coast of California, were annexed in 1898. This 
action was taken at the request of the inhabitants. The same 
year saw the acquisition of the Philippines, Guam, and Porto 
Rico as the result of the war with Spain. The Samoan island 
of Tutuila and the Danish West Indies (renamed the Virgin 
Islands) have also come in f o American hands. 

The United States, though not unwilling to obtain colonies 
in the New World, denies the right of any European nation to 
The Monroe acquire additional territory here. This policy of 

Doctrine, “America for Americans” is known as the Monroe 

1823 

Doctrine. It was first formulated partly to stave 
off any attempt of the Old World monarchies, led by Metternich, 
to aid Spain in the reconquest of her colonies, and partly to 
prevent the further extension southward of the Russian province 
of Alaska. The interests of Great Britain in both these direc¬ 
tions coincided with those of the United States. Relying on 
the support of the British government, President Monroe sent 


























































































The United States 


583 


his celebrated message to Congress (1823), in which he declared 
that the American continents were henceforth “not to be con¬ 
sidered as subjects for future colonization by any European 
powers.” 

The solemn protest of the United States, backed by Great 
Britain, removed for a time the danger of European interference 
in America. As we have just seen, Napoleon III 

. , . . . Enforcement 

afterward tried to create a Mexican empire for 0 f the 
France, but this breach of the Monroe Doctrine Monroe 

Doctrine 

was soon repaired. President Cleveland enforced 
it in 1895, when he intervened in a dispute between Great 
Britain and Venezuela, in order to 
prevent an alleged encroachment 
by the former power upon the Vene¬ 
zuelan boundary of British Guiana. 

The Monroe Doctrine, though not 
a part of international law, is now 
generally recognized by the leading 
powers. Due to its existence no 
new European colony has been es¬ 
tablished in the New World since 
1823. It has preserved the Ameri¬ 
can continents from being over¬ 
run and exploited during the last 
one hundred years — a contrast 
to the fate of Africa, Asia, and Oceania in the same period. 

The idea of an artificial waterway at Panama or some other 
suitable point had been broached almost as soon as the Spanish 
conquest of Central America and had been re- Panama 
peatedly discussed for more than three centuries. Cana1,1914 
Nothing was done until 1881, when a French company, headed 
by De Lesseps (§ 150), began excavations at Panama. Extrava¬ 
gance and corruption characterized the management of the 
company from the start; it went into bankruptcy before the 
work was half done. The United States in 1902 bought its 
property and rights for forty million dollars. Shortly afterward, 
the secession of Panama from Colombia enabled the United 



James Monroe 


584 Expansion of Europe in the New World 



States to obtain from the new republic occupation and control 
of a canal zone, ten miles wide, for the purposes of the canal. 
The work was completed in 1914. The Panama Canal greatly 

shortens the dis¬ 


tance between 
the Atlantic, the 
Gulf, and the 
Pacific coasts of 
the New World. 
This means lower 
freight rates and 
improvement in 
the passenger and 
mail service. 
Increased com¬ 
merce, travel, 
and communica¬ 
tion will do much 
in the future to 
bring together 
and keep to¬ 
gether the two 
Americas. 

163. The United 
States and Latin 
America 

The enforce- 
ment of the 
Monroe Doctrine 


Relief Map of the Panama Canal and the protec¬ 

tion of the Pan¬ 
ama Canal have made it necessary for the United States not 
only to defend the Latin-American republics against foreign 


The “ Yankee attack, but also to interfere from time to time in 
Peril ” their domestic affairs. Our warships and soldiers 

have been repeatedly sent to Mexico, Central America, and 







The United States and Latin America 585 


the West Indies for the purpose of protecting our citizens 
and those of European countries from rioters or revolutionists. 
Though grateful to her mighty neighbor for help, Latin Amer¬ 
ica has trembled lest intervention to restore order might pass 
into downright conquest. The United States is sometimes rep¬ 
resented by Latin Americans as a giant nation destined to 
absorb during the next century whatever of Mexico, Central 
America, and the West Indies she has not taken during the last 
one hundred years. This is the so-called “Yankee Peril.” 

It is the purpose of the Pan-American movement to establish 
more cordial relations between the United States and Latin 
America. Pan-Americanism rests on the fact that p a n- 
the northern republic and her southern neighbors, Americanism 
however unlike in many respects, are one in their independence 
of Europe and detachment from European concerns, in their 
governmental system, and in their political ideals. They form 
a distinct family of nations and ought to cooperate for the 
promotion of their common interests. If the Monroe Doctrine 
remains the national policy of the United States, Pan-American¬ 
ism, it is urged, should become the international policy of the 
two Americas. 

The Pan-American ideal may be said to date back to 1826, 
when Bolivar invited the United States to participate in an 
international gathering at Panama. Congress Pan-American 
made the necessary appropriations to send dele- congresses 
gates to Panama, but they did not arrive until after the meeting 
had adjourned. The United States took no part in any sub¬ 
sequent gathering with the Latin-American countries until 
1889. In that year James G. Blaine, secretary of state under 
President Harrison and long an advocate of Pan-Americanism, 
presided at Washington over the first “International Conference 
of American States,” popularly called the Pan-American Con¬ 
ference. Later conferences have been held at Mexico City, 
Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile, and Havana. 

One result of the First Pan-American Conference was the 
foundation of the Pan-American Union, an international 
organization maintained in Washington by the twenty-one 


586 Expansion of Europe in the New World 


American republics. It is controlled by a governing board 
made up of the secretary of state of the United States and 
The Pan- the diplomatic representatives of Latin America 
American in Washington. The Pan-American Union has 
for its aim the “ development of commerce, 
friendly intercourse, good understanding, and the preserva¬ 
tion of peace” among all American countries. 

The participation of almost all the countries of Latin America 
in the League of Nations witnesses to their growing unity. At 
American the same time, the failure of the United States to 
solidarity join the League emphasizes the international 
isolation of that country, not only as respects Europe, but also 
as respects her American neighbors. The Covenant of the 
League provides for the settlement of controversies among 
members through the agency of its Council. Should Latin- 
American nations at any time accept the jurisdiction of the 
League in settling their disputes with European countries, 
rather than the jurisdiction of the United States, a situation 
might arise imperiling the Monroe Doctrine. Article 21 of the 
Covenant declares that nothing in the Covenant shall be 
deemed to affect the validity of “ regional understandings like 
the Monroe Doctrine,” but that Doctrine has never been 
exactly defined or interpreted. What seems to be needed, 
therefore, is its restatement in terms acceptable to Latin Amer¬ 
ica, as well as to the United States. It will then express more 
clearly than ever the solidarity of all the American nations. 
It will then be another name for Pan-Americanism. 


164. Canada 


The population of Canada in 1763 was almost entirely French. 
After the American Revolution Canada received a large number 
of “Tories” from the Thirteen Colonies, together 
with numerous emigrants from Great Britain. 
The new settlers had so many quarrels with the 
French Canadians that Parliament divided the country into 
Upper Canada for the British and Lower Canada for the 


Upper and 

Lower 

Canada 


Canada 587 

French. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland re¬ 
mained separate provinces. 

The second war between Great Britain and the United States 
seemed to furnish a good opportunity for the conquest of Canada, 
but British and French Canadians united in de- war of 
fense of their country and drove out the American 1 81 2-1814 
armies. The treaty of peace left matters as they were before 
the war. A few years later the United States and Great Britain 
agreed to dismantle forts and reduce naval armaments on the 
waterways separating American from Canadian territory. 
This agreement has been loyally observed on both sides for more 
than a century. The unfortified boundary from the Atlantic 
to the Pacific is an eloquent testimony to the good relations 
between Canada and the United States. 

Canada had done her duty to the British Empire during the 
War of 1812-1814, but she waited more than thirty years for 
her reward in the shape of self-government. The Durham 
Great Britain, after losing the Thirteen Colonies, Re P ° rt > 1839 
did not favor any measures which might result in Canadian 
independence as well. Finally, Parliament sent over a wise 
statesman, Lord Durham, to investigate the political discontent 
in Canada. Lord Durham in his Report urged that the only 
method of keeping distant colonies is to allow them to rule 
themselves. If the Canadians received freedom to manage 
their domestic affairs they would be more, and not less, loyal, 
for they would have fewer causes of complaint against the 
mother country. The Durham Report produced a lasting effect 
on British colonial policy. Not only did Great Britain grant 
parliamentary institutions and self-government to the Canadian 
provinces, but, as we have seen, she also bestowed the same 
privileges upon her Australasian and South African dominions. 

Another of Lord Durham’s recommendations led to the union 
of Upper Canada (Ontario) and Lower Canada (Quebec). In 
1867 Ontario and Quebec formed with Nova Scotia The Domin _ 
and New Brunswick the confederation known as ion of 
the Dominion of Canada. It has a governor- Canada » 1867 
general, representing the British sovereign, a senate whose 


588 Expansion of Europe in the New World 


members hold office for life, and an elective house of commons, 
to which the cabinet of ministers is responsible. Each Canadian 
province also maintains a parliament for local legislation. The 
distinguishing feature of the Canadian constitution is that all 
powers not definitely assigned by it to the provinces belong to 
the Dominion. Consequently, the question of “states’ rights” 
can never be raised in Canada. 

The new Dominion expanded rapidly. It purchased from 
the Hudson Bay Company the extensive territories out of which 
Territorial the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and 

expansion Alberta have been created. British Columbia 

and Prince Edward Island soon came into the confederation. 
All the remainder of British North America, except Newfound¬ 
land, which still holds aloof, was annexed in 1878 to the Domin¬ 
ion of Canada. One government now holds sway over the 
whole region from the Great Lakes to the Arctic Circle. 

Equally rapid has been the development of the Dominion 
in wealth and population. The western provinces, formerly 
Economic left to roving Indian tribes and a few white traders, 
development are attracting numerous foreign immigrants. 
Three transcontinental railroads make accessible the agricul¬ 
tural resources of the Dominion, its forests, and its deposits of 
coal and minerals. Canada now ranks as the largest, richest, 
and most populous member of the British Empire. 

The World War did something to break down the isolation 
of Canada from the United States. Many American citizens, 
Canada before their country entered the struggle, enlisted 

and the in the Canadian army and fought for democracy 

Umted States un( j er a foreign flag. With the return of peace, 
the closer relations thus established ought to continue. Canada, 
increasingly industrial in the east but agricultural in the west, 
faces much the same economic and social problems as confront 
her southern neighbor. While the former agitation for the 
incorporation of Canada in the United States has quite disap¬ 
peared on both sides of the boundary line, common experiences, 
interests, and ideals may be expected to tighten the bonds be¬ 
tween the two English-speaking countries of the New World. 


Close of Geographical Discovery 589 

165. Close of Geographical Discovery 

Half the globe was still unmapped in 1800. Canada, Alaska, 
and the Louisiana territory were so little known that a geog¬ 
raphy published at that time omits any reference unmapped 
to the Rocky Mountains. South America, though regions, 1800 
long settled by white men, continued to be largely unexplored. 
Scant information existed about the Pacific islands and Aus¬ 
tralia. Much of Asia remained sealed to Europeans. Accurate 
knowledge of Africa did not reach beyond the edges of that 
continent. The larger part of the Arctic region had not yet been 
discovered, and the Antarctic region had barely been touched. 

Discoveries and explorations during the nineteenth century 
carried forward the geographical conquest of the world. The 
great African rivers were traced to their sources Filling in the 
in the heart of what had once been the “Dark ma P 
Continent.” In Asia, the headwaters of the Indus and the 
Ganges were reached; the Himalayas were measured and shown 
to be the loftiest of mountains; Tibet, the mysterious, was 
penetrated; and the veil of darkness shrouding China, Korea, 
Indo-China, and other Asiatic countries was lifted. Travelers 
penetrated the deserts of inner Australia and finally crossed 
the entire continent from south to north. The journeys of 
Alexander von Humboldt in the Amazon and Orinoco valleys 
began the systematic exploration of South America, while those 
of Lewis and Clark opened up the Louisiana territory. 
Still later, Alaska, the Northwest Territories of Canada, and 
Labrador began to come out from obscurity. Even Greenland 
was crossed by Nansen, a Norwegian, and its coast was charted 
by Danish geographers and the American Peary. 

Voyages in search of the Northwest Passage 1 had already 
revealed the great number of islands, peninsulas, and ice-bound 
channels north of the American continent. Many Arctic 
heroic but fruitless attempts had also been made exploration 
to reach the North Pole. Nansen in 1892-1895 utilized the ice 

1 The Northwest Passage was first completely navigated by the Norwegian 
Amundsen between 1903 and 1906. 


590 Expansion of Europe in the New World 

drift to carry his ship, the Fratn, across the polar sea. Finding 
that the drift would not take him to the pole, he left the Fram 
and with a single companion advanced to 86° 14' N., or within 
two hundred and seventy-two miles of the pole. An Italian 

expedition, a few years later, got 
still farther north. The honor of 
actually reaching the pole was 
carried off by Peary in 1909. 
He traveled the last stages of 
the journey by sledge over the 
ice and reached his goal in com¬ 
pany with a colored servant and 
several Eskimos. Nansen’s and 
Peary’s journeys showed that no 
land exists in the north polar 
basin, only a sea of great but 
unknown depth. 

The south polar region, on 
the other hand, is a land mass 
of continental dimensions. First 
approached by Cook on his second voyage (§ 124), it has since 
Antarctic been visited by many explorers. They have traced 
exploration the CO urse of the great ice barrier, discovered ex¬ 
tensive mountain ranges, and even found volcanoes belching 
forth lava amidst the snows. In 1907-1909 a British expe¬ 
dition under Sir Ernest Shackleton attained 88° 23' S., or within 
ninety-seven miles of the pole. Amundsen, who reached the 
pole in 1911, was soon followed by Captain R. F. Scott, but this 
gallant Englishman and his four companions died of cold and 
starvation on the return journey. The records of polar explo¬ 
ration are, indeed, full of tragedies. 

Considerable spaces of the earth’s surface still await scientific 
investigation. The Antarctic continent and Greenland offer 
Regions still many problems to geographers. The enormous 
unmapped basin of the Amazon is still little known. Practi¬ 
cally no knowledge exists of the interior of New Guinea, the 
largest of islands, if Australia be reckoned as a continent. 



Robert E. Perry 



140 ° ICO ISO 1 G 0 


40 ° 60 ° 80 ° 100° 120° 140 ° 



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59i 




























































592 Expansion of Europe in the New World 


Australia itself has not been completely explored. In Asia, 
there is still much information to be gained concerning the 
great central plateau, the Arctic coast, and inner Arabia. 
Equatorial Africa affords another promising field for discovery. 
It thus remains for the twentieth century to complete the geo¬ 
graphical conquest of the world. 

Studies 

i. What parts of the New World are to-day occupied or colonized 
by Anglo-Saxon peoples? by Latin peoples? 2. What is the origin 
of the names Louisiana, Alberta, Venezuela, Colombia, and Bolivia? 
3. “ The disappearance of the Spanish colonial empire is one of the 
most significant features of the nineteenth century.” Comment on 
this statement. 4. Name and locate the capitals of the twenty 
republics of Latin America. 5. Look up in an encyclopedia an account 
of the Trans-Andean Railway. 6. What European powers retain 
possessions in South America, Central America, and the West Indies? 
7. Trace on the map (facing page 582) the expansion of the United 
States. 8. Compare the westward expansion of the United States 
with the expansion of Russia. 9. Name the principal transcon¬ 
tinental railroads in the United States. 10. How was the promulga¬ 
tion of the Monroe Doctrine a check to the spread of the Metternich 
system? 11. Account for the special interests of the United States 
in the West Indies and Central America. 12. Enumerate the terri¬ 
tories and protectorates of the United States in the Caribbean area 
(map on page 580). 13. What do you understand by Pan-American¬ 

ism? 14. Why has Lord Durham’s Report been called the “ Magna 
Carta of the British colonies ”? 15. What were the successive steps 

in the-formation of the Dominion of Canada? 16. Trace on the map 
(page 591) the routes of Nansen, Peary, and Amundsen in the polar 
regions. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 1 
166. Militarism and Armaments 

Man from very early times seems to have been given to war¬ 
fare, turning on his fellows the club, spear, and sword that he 
had first used against wild animals. Clans fought Primitive 
against clans and tribes against tribes, long before warfare 
nations fought with nations. Primitive wars were doubtless 
on a small scale. They were raids for food, for booty, and for 
slaves, or they arose out of disputes between rival communities 
over a hunting ground or pastures and wells. Such wars may 
sometimes have contributed to human progress, by binding 
people together in a common enterprise and by accustoming 
them to discipline and self-sacrifice. 

Wars only increased in scope and number when man passed 
from savagery and barbarism to civilization. Much history, 
as commonly written, is a record of fighting. Mar- Warfare in 
tial peoples formed empires in China and India, historic times 
while in the Near East during ancient times Egypt, Babylonia, 
Assyria, and Persia built up great conquering states. In classi¬ 
cal antiquity, when the scene shifted to the Mediterranean, the 
Greeks continued the warlike tradition, and later the Romans 
spread their sway over three continents. The triumph of Rome 
gave peace to Europe for several centuries, but after the break¬ 
up of the empire came the Middle Ages, when Europe for a 
thousand years was overrun by barbarian invaders and feudal 

1 Webster, Readings in Modern European History, chapter xxxviii, “The Outbreak 
of the World War”; chapter xxxix, “A War Correspondent at the British Front” ; 
chapter xli, “Wilson and the World War”; chapter xlii, “The United States at 
War”; chapter xliii, “The Peace Conference.” 

593 


594 


International Relations 


knights. How many and how destructive have been the wars 
of modern times! One needs only refer here to the War of the 
Spanish Succession (§ 106), the Seven Years’ War (§ 109), the 
conflicts of the revolutionary and Napoleonic eras (§§ 136, 137), 
and the struggles which unified Italy and Germany in the 
nineteenth century (§§ 141, 142). 



“Hans and Jacques (together): ‘And I hear there’s more to come!”’ A cartoon that 
appeared in Punch, February 26, 1913. 

Between 1871 and 1914 there were wars in the Balkans, in 
“ Armed Asia, and in Africa. The nations of western Eu- 
peace ” rope, however, did not draw the sword against one 

another for more than forty years. Yet at no other period 




Militarism and Armaments 


595 


had there been such enormous expenditures for armaments, 
such huge standing armies, and such colossal navies. Western 
Europe enjoyed peace, but it was an “armed peace” based 
upon fear. 

The improvements in weapons after 1871 made warfare a 
branch of applied science requiring expert technical knowledge 
on the battlefield and in the munition factory. New means 
The new or perfected means of destruction included of de- 
the breech-loading rifle, machine gun, and smoke- structlon 
less powder, together with the enlargement of cannon and the 
use of long-range, high-explosive projectiles. In death-dealing 
efficiency they threw all previous inventions into the shade. 

The changed methods of fighting demanded the “nation in 
arms,” rather than the old-fashioned armies composed of volun¬ 
teers and mercenaries. As early as the eighteenth standing 
century, European monarchs began to draft soldiers armies 
from among their subjects, but at first only artisans and peas¬ 
ants. During the revolutionary era France resorted to forced 
levies, which placed all males of military age at the service of 
the armies. Prussia went further during the Napoleonic era 
and adopted universal military service, as well in time of peace 
as in time of war. All able-bodied men were to receive several 
years’ training in the army and then pass into the reserve, whence 
they could be called to the colors upon the outbreak of hos¬ 
tilities. This Prussian system, having proved its worth in the 
wars against Napoleon, was extended by William I soon after 
his accession to the throne (§ 137). The speedy triumphs of 
Prussia in 1866 and 1870 led all the principal European nations, 
except Great Britain, to adopt universal military service. 
Europe thus became an “armed camp,” with five million men 
constantly under arms. 

Great Britain found sufficient protection in her navy, which 
it had long been the British policy to maintain at a strength at 
least equal to that of any two other powers. Her Nayies 
widespread empire depends upon control of the 
seas, and being no longer self-supporting, she would face star¬ 
vation in time of war were she blockaded by an enemy. Ger- 


596 


international Relations 


many also built up a mighty navy of dreadnaughts and super- 
dreadnaughts, under the inspiration of William II, who declared 
that the “trident must be in our hands.” The fleets of France 
and Italy likewise became larger, more formidable, and more 
expensive every year. 

The crushing burden of standing armies and navies produced 
a popular agitation in many countries to abolish warfare. The 
Peace rescript movement took practical shape as the result of a 
of Nicholas II, proposal by Nicholas II for an international con- 
1898 ference which should arrange a general disarma¬ 

ment. The tsar’s rescript of 1898 was a telling indictment of 
militarism in these words: “ The preservation of peace has 
been put forward as the object of international policy. In its 
name the great states have concluded between themselves 
powerful alliances; the better to guarantee peace, they have 
developed their military forces in proportions hitherto unprece¬ 
dented, and still continue to increase them without shrinking 
from any sacrifice. All these efforts, nevertheless, have not yet 
been able to bring about the beneficent results of the desired 
pacification. ... In proportion as the armaments of each 
power increase, do they less and less fulfill the objects which 
the governments have set before themselves. Economic crises, 
due in great part to the system of armaments a outrance 1 and 
the continual danger which lies in this accumulation of war 
material, are transforming the 1 armed peace’ of our days into a 
crushing burden which the peoples have more and more diffi¬ 
culty in bearing. It appears evident, then, that if this state of 
things continues, it will inevitably lead to the very cataclysm 
which it is desired to avert, and the horrors of which make every 
thinking being shudder in anticipation.” 

As the result of the tsar’s rescript, delegates from twenty-six 
sovereign states met in 1899 at The Hague, Holland, in the 
Peace First Peace Conference. A Second Peace Confer- 

Conferences ence 0 f forty-four sovereign states assembled in 
1907. Attempts were made at these gatherings to lessen the 
horrors of future wars, for instance, by prohibiting the use of 


1 “To the utmost.” 


The World War 


597 


asphyxiating gases and the dropping of projectiles from balloons. 
Neither conference could agree, however, to limit armaments 
or military expenditures, much less to provide for general dis¬ 
armament. 

167 . The World War 

Long before 1914 mighty forces making for war had been 
present in Europe, forces that needed only to be released to 
bring about a conflict. What these were we have War-making 
already learned. First, there was extreme nation- forces 
alism (§ 135), a sentiment which had gained ground all through 
the nineteenth century. It bred ill-will between European 
peoples. It made difficult any real sympathy or understanding 
between them. Each people developed an exaggerated sense 
of “national honor” and, like a duelist, professed its readiness 
to fight “at the drop of the hat” on any occasion of the slightest 
insult to the government or even to a single citizen. Second, 
there was imperialism (§ 148). European nations could not 
compete for markets, trading-posts, spheres of influence, pro¬ 
tectorates, and colonies in every part of the world without 
becoming as bitter rivals abroad as they were at home. Third, 
there was militarism and the wasteful, fear-producing competi¬ 
tion in armaments (§ 166). 

National rivalries and antipathies came to a head during the 
forty-three years between 1871 and 1914. Feelings of both 
revenge and fear stirred France: revenge for the National 
humiliating defeats of the Franco-German War rivalries and 
and the loss of Alsace-Lorraine (§ 142); fear lest antl P athies 
with the rapid increase of German wealth, population, and 
military power she might be suddenly attacked and over¬ 
whelmed by her Teutonic neighbor. Germany professed to 
be much afraid of Russia, whose “Slavic hordes” might sweep 
over central Europe as the Mongols had done in the Middle 
Ages. Russia watched with dismay the increasing influence of 
Austria-Hungary in the Balkans, which promised to check¬ 
mate her own plans to acquire territory there and drive the 
Turks out of Constantinople. Great Britain and Germany 


598 


International Relations 


also began to draw apart. One reason was the great industrial 
development of the latter country, making her a serious com¬ 
petitor of British merchants in foreign markets. Another 
reason was the apparent intention of Germany to build up a 
colonial empire rivaling that of Great Britain. Still another 
and perhaps the most important reason was the rapid growth 
of the German navy, challenging British supremacy of the seas. 

The rivalries and antipathies of the European nations pre¬ 
disposed them to war, but it was the system of entangling alli- 
Entangling ances that brought them, one after another, into 
alliances the World War. This system developed in the 
latter part of the nineteenth century, after both Italy and Ger¬ 
many had won by the sword their long-desired unification. 
The creation of a united Italy, and especially of a united Ger¬ 
many, quite upset the old balance of power as established by 
the Congress of Vienna (§ 139). After 1871 statesmen sought 
by means of alliances between the different countries to secure 
a new equilibrium of European politics. 

There were two great alliances in 1914. The Triple Alliance 
united Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy for defensive 
Triple Alliance P ur P oses - If one of them was attacked, the others 
and Dual promised their help in resisting the attack. The 
Dual Alliance in the same way bound together 
France and Russia, not to make war on their neighbors, but to 
protect themselves from being warred on by their neighbors. 

The early years of the twentieth century also saw Great 
Britain emerge from her isolation and seek new friendships on 
The Triple the Continent. She reached with both France and 
Entente Russia, a “cordial understanding” {entente cor- 

diale). This was not a formal alliance of the three countries, 
but it prepared the way for their closer cooperation in the case 
of future war. 

Such was the diplomatic situation in 1914, when the assassi¬ 
nation at Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, of the archduke Fran- 
Outbreak of cis Ferdinand, heir to the Hapsburg throne, pro- 
the war voked Austria-Hungary to declare war on Serbia. 

The Austro-Hungarian government, in justification for this 



599 


The World War in 1918 

















































































































































6oo 


International Relations 


action, declared that the assassins had been aided by Serbian 
officials, with the connivance of the government of Serbia. 
Russia, the “big brother” of the Slavs in the Balkans, could 
not look on without concern while a great Teutonic power 
moved against and perhaps destroyed a little Slav state. But 
if Russia stepped in to aid Serbia, by making war on Austria- 
Hungary, then Germany, as the latter’s ally, would surely attack 
Russia; and France, allied to Russia, would be obliged to attack 
Germany. The alliances of the great powers, instead of pre¬ 
serving peace, threatened to involve most of Europe in war. 
Efforts to prevent it by referring the dispute to an international 
conference proved fruitless. Austria-Hungary stubbornly de¬ 
clared that her quarrel with Serbia was a matter which did not 
concern the other powers, and in this attitude she had the full 
support of her ally, Germany. One country after another now 
began to mobilize its armies, and within a week after Aus¬ 
tria-Hungary had begun hostilities against Serbia, not only 
these two states, but also Russia', Germany, France, Belgium 
(whose territory was invaded by German troops in order to 
strike at France), and Great Britain were locked in deadly 
strife. 

The war which thus began on July 28, 1914, lasted until 
November n, 1918, when Germany signed with the Allies an 
Course of the armistice that amounted to unconditional surrender. 
war During these years the number of combatants 

steadily increased. Turkey and Bulgaria threw in their lot with 
the Central Powers. Italy, 1 Rumania, and Greece joined the 
Allies. Japan almost immediately entered the war on their 
side, and the United States did so in 1917, after submarine 
atrocities by the Germans and their intrigues and conspiracies 
in this country had aroused the warlike temper of the American 
people. To tell the story of the bitter struggle on land and sea 
and in the'air, the gigantic battles, beginning with that of the 
Marne, the victories and defeats, the mutual slaughter, the 

1 Italy declared neutrality in 1914, on the ground that the terms of the Triple 
Alliance did not bind her to assist the Central Powers in an offensive war. She 
joined the Allies less than a year later. 


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International Relations 



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602 


International Relations 


suffering, heroism, and patient endurance on each side would 
be out of place in a book which recounts the history of civiliza¬ 
tion. The political results of the war — the overthrow of autoc¬ 
racy and the formation of many new democratic governments 
— have been discussed in a previous chapter (§§ 145-147). It 
remains to consider the economic and social consequences of a 
war of such magnitude. 

168 . Cost of the World War 

The World War deserved its name. It cast a dark shadow 
over almost the entire globe. Nothing like it had ever happened 
A world before. Twenty-eight countries, with their colo- 

war nial dependencies, took up arms, while five Latin- 

American countries broke off diplomatic relations with Germany. 
Only sixteen countries (Spain, Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, 
Norway, Sweden, Abyssinia, Persia, Afghanistan, Mexico, 
Salvador, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, Paraguay, and Argen¬ 
tina), with less than one-sixteenth of the world’s population, 
remained neutral. 

The Allies mobilized about forty million men and the Central 
Powers about twenty million men, making a grand total of sixty 

million combatants from beginning to end of the 
Blood cost . _ . . , 6 . 6 

struggle. It is impossible to give an exact state¬ 
ment of the casualties. Probably ten million soldiers lost their 
lives in battle or as a result of wounds, accidents, and disease. 
Probably twenty million soldiers were wounded, perhaps a quarter 
of them being permanently disabled in body or in health. The 
death loss among non-combatants, as the result of pestilence, 
famine, and massacres, has been estimated at twenty millions. 
The total mortality directly traceable to the World War would 
thus amount to thirty millions. These figures must be greatly 
increased if account is taken of the loss of population due to the 
decline of the normal birth-rate and the increase of the normal 
death-rate among European peoples. Not more than five mil¬ 
lion lives had been lost in battle in all the wars from the time of 
the French Revolution to 1914. 


Cost of the World War 


603 

The ten million soldiers who fell in the war were mostly 
picked men. They had passed tests for physical and mental 
fitness; they were in the prime of life and health The war and 
and strength; they should have been the virile the race 
fathers of the next generation. France, who lost altogether 
i )75°j 00 ° soldiers, had sixty per cent of her young men killed in 
battle or as the result of battle. The mortality among the 


iroo 



From “ The War with Germany,” published by U. S. War Department. 

youth in the German, British, and other European armies doubt¬ 
less reached almost as high a figure. This is necessarily the 
outcome of the system of universal military service, where 
the fittest go to the slaughter and the weaklings remain 
at home. The war, therefore, injured the race fiber of the 
principal European nations. Its effects in this direction 
may make themselves felt for many decades, possibly for 
centuries. 













604 


International Relations 


A conservative estimate of the direct money cost of the war 

to the belligerent nations is $186,000,000,000. This sum, 

„ enormous as it is, does not take into account the 

Money cost . , , . r 

indirect cost, including the destruction of property 

on land and sea, the depreciation of capital, the interruption of 

trade, the loss of production due to the employment of the 



Money Cost to the Combatant Nations for Direct War Expenses, 
to the Spring of 1919 

From “ The War with Germany,” published by the U. S. War Department. 


world’s workers in military activities, the payments for war 
relief, and the expenditures of neutral nations. Such items 
would amount to many more billions. However, any estimate 
of either the direct or the indirect cost must make allowance 
for the depreciation of the currencies in all European countries 
during the war period. Measured in dollars the total expendi¬ 
ture was one thing; measured in terms of labor and commodities 
it was another and lesser thing. The figure given above for the 












Cost of the World War 


605 


direct cost must be halved, if it is to be adjusted to the pur¬ 
chasing power of currencies before the war began. But even 
$93,000,000,000 is a sum so great as almost to defy the imagina¬ 
tion. It is a thousand dollars for every mile of the distance 
between our earth and the sun. All the wars from the time of the 
French Revolution to 1914 cost not more than $25,000,000,000. 

The war was financed to some extent by increased taxation, 

especially in Great Britain and the United States, but chiefly 

by borrowing. The nations, in the first place, „ 

. . 1 „ -> War finance 

issued vast quantities of paper money. Such 
forced loans are easily made on the Continent, where the gov¬ 
ernments control the banks and possess a monopoly of note 
issue (§ 128). In the second place, the nations sold their bonds, 
or promises to pay, to all who would buy them. The amounts 
raised were far greater than had been supposed possible. The 
people bought the bonds out of their savings, for the war taught 
lessons of thrift to almost every one and made it a patriotic duty 
for the citizen to save that his country might have more to spend. 

The end of the war left the whole financial world in chaos. 
All the belligerents had to impose heavy additional taxation, 
in order to meet the interest on their huge debts Finance after 
and repair the destruction caused by the struggle. the war 
Many of them found it difficult to avoid bankruptcy. Great 
Britain and the United States were the only important coun¬ 
tries which from the start balanced their budgets and did not 
show a large gap between income and expenditure. 

The financial burden which our own and future generations 
must carry is shown by the gigantic national debts. These 
now total nearly ten times what they were before National 
the war. The debt of Great Britain, at the peak debts 
in 1920, was $40,000,000,000; that of the United States, at 
the peak in 1919, was in excess of $26,000,000,000. Both these 
countries are now paying off their indebtedness — the United 
States doing so at the rapid rate of about a billion a year. Dur¬ 
ing the war the Allies borrowed about $10,000,000,000 from the 
United States. Great Britain and most of the Continental 
states have begun to meet the interest charges on what they 


6 o6 


International Relations 


owe and to pay off the principal. It is expected that the British 
debt to the United States will be completely extinguished in 
sixty years. Payments made by other European countries to the 
United States will likewise be spread over a long period of time. 

The World War involved Europe, the largest part of North 
America and South America, much of Africa, two-thirds of Asia, 
Modem and mos t Oceania. Improved methods of trans¬ 
warfare portation and communication have brought all 

world-wide civilized peoples so close together that a shot fired 
in the Balkans soon provoked an international crisis and at 
length produced a world-wide conflict. It was impossible to 
localize the last war; it will be equally impossible to localize 
the next war. 

Everything indicates that the next war, if on the scale of the 
last one, will be still more destructive of life and property. 
Modern Airplanes, submarines, battleships, and armament 
warfare are being rapidly improved. “Tanks” are evolv¬ 

ing into land battleships, equipped with field guns 
as well as machine guns. Poison gases, powerful enough to 
disable or kill thousands of people at one time, have been dis¬ 
covered and perfected. Nor does the ghastly catalogue end 
here. Disease germs, capable of polluting the water supply 
of whole areas, blight to destroy crops, anthrax to slay horses 
and cattle, and plague to sweep away entire populations are 
being prepared in the chemical laboratories of more than one 
great country. Modern warfare, by using all the agencies of 
modern science, threatens to become a sort of collective suicide 
of the nations. Mr. Lloyd George spoke soberly when he 
declared that another war will be against civilization. He might 
have added, it will destroy civilization. 


169 . The Peace Movement 

Christianity introduced into Europe an exalted idea of the 
Early sacredness of human life (§69). It condemned 


Christianity 
and warfare 


homicide of any kind, and therefore regarded war 
as unlawful under any circumstances. Had not 
Christ declared that “all they that take the sword shall perish 


The Peace Movement 


607 


with the sword”? 1 The Christian Church formed, in fact, the 
first peace society and launched the first peace movement. It 
proved to be impossible to preserve a pacifist attitude after 
Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. 
That empire had been built up by successful warfare, and only 
by warfare could it be defended against its barbarian foes. 
The use of the cross on the standards of the imperial army 
showed what a change had come over the spirit of Christianity. 

The Church in the Middle Ages, while by no means a pacifist 
body, in general cast its influence on the side of peace. It 
deserves credit for establishing the Truce of God The medieval 
(§ 81) and for many efforts to stamp out private Church and 
warfare between feudal nobles. The Church, how- warfare 
ever, encouraged crusades against heretics and infidels. The 
institution of chivalry (§75) and the military orders of monks, 
such as Templars and Hospitalers (§ 78), illustrate the union 
between Christianity and militancy. 

The rise of Protestantism did not produce a change in the 
attitude of official Christianity toward war. Most of the 
Protestant churches were State churches, and their Protestantism 
ministers, considering themselves in the public and warfare 
service, usually supported whatever war the government under¬ 
took. Nevertheless, Christian sects arose which condemned 
all war. The English Lollards in the fourteenth century taught 
that homicide in war is forbidden by the New Testament. The 
sixteenth-century Anabaptists, who had many followers in 
Germany and other countries, believed that Christians should 
not bear arms or offer forcible resistance to wrongdoers or wield 
the sword. The Society of Friends (commonly called Quakers), 
which arose in the seventeenth century, was also a pacifist 
organization. 

Strong protests against war were voiced at various times by 
isolated reformers, for instance, by Erasmus and Voltaire. 
The nineteenth century saw the rise of peace so- Peace 
cieties numbering several hundreds throughout the agencies 
world. Their first international congress took place as early 

1 Matthew, xxvi, 52. 


6 o8 


International Relations 


as 1843. These societies held regular meetings and kept up a 
permanent bureau at Bern, Switzerland. They helped to 
arouse public sentiment in favor of compulsory arbitration, the 
restriction of armaments, and the removal of the causes of war. 
The Pan-American Union (§ 163) had for its purpose the fur¬ 
therance of good relations among all the twenty-one republics 
of the New World. The peace movement was also promoted 

by private benefactors. Al¬ 
fred Nobel, the Swedish inven¬ 
tor of dynamite and other 
explosives, who left his fortune 
for the establishment of inter¬ 
national prizes, directed that 
one of these should be annually 
awarded to the person or so¬ 
ciety rendering the greatest 
service to the cause of human 
brotherhood. Andrew Carne¬ 
gie gave ten million dollars 
as an endowment to hasten 
the abolition of international 
war, “the foulest blot on our 
civilization.” The endowment 

After the portrait by Miervelt of Grotius at waJ . particularly intended to 
the age of forty-mne. ^ J 

encourage studies in economics, 
history, and international law, so that the world’s peoples 
might know one another better and so avoid many sources of 
friction between them. 

What is called international law arose as an attempt to frame 
rules acceptable to all nations and binding upon them in their 
international relations with one another. These rules were first 
law set forth by a great Dutch jurist, Hugo Grotius, 

who ranks as the founder of international law. He wrote his 
truly epoch-making treatise, On the Law of War and Peace , in 
the early sixteenth century. “I saw prevailing throughout the 
Christian world a license in making war of which even barba¬ 
rous nations would have been ashamed. Recourse was had to 



Hugo Grotius 


International Organization 


609 


arms for slight reasons or no reason; and when arms were once 
taken up, all reverence for divine and human law was thrown 
away, just as if men were henceforth authorized to commit ah 
crimes without restraint.” 1 The field of international law has 
steadily widened since 1625, when the work of Grotius appeared. 
At the present time some of the great jurists of the world are 
engaged in the preparation of an enlarged and improved code 
of laws to regulate the intercourse of nations. 

170 . International Organization 

The idea of keeping peace by international agreements is not 
new. Several great wars have been followed by projects for 
the prevention of future conflicts. After the reli- Early peace 
gious struggles of the sixteenth century in France projects 
came the “Grand Design” of Henry IV. This scheme for the 
establishment of a European Confederation or Christian Repub¬ 
lic was never carried into effect, owing to the assassination of 
the French king. Near the close of the seventeenth century, 
William Penn wrote a prophetic Essay towards the Present and 
Future Peace of Europe (1692). Penn argued that an inter¬ 
national Diet or Parliament, obeying “the same rules of justice 
and peace by which parents and masters govern their families, 
magistrates their cities, estates their republics, and princes and 
kings their principalities and kingdoms,” could abolish warfare 
between the nations. The French revolutionary wars produced 
Immanuel Kant’s Towards Perpetual Peace (1795). In this work 
the great German philosopher declared that perpetual peace 
might be secured by an international union of states and that 
such a union would become possible when autocracies gave way 
to democracies. 

It was the autocrats, however, who made the first attempt 
at a League of Nations. In 1815, after Europe had been ex¬ 
hausted by the struggle against Napoleon, the tsar The Holy 
of Russia, the Austrian emperor, and the king of Alliance 
Prussia formed a so-called Holy Alliance. The three rulers 
pledged themselves “in the name of the Most Holy and Indi- 

1 Grotius, On the Law of War and Peace, Prolegomena, 28. 


6 io 


International Relations 


visible Trinity” to take for their sole guide henceforth “the 
precepts of justice, Christian charity, and peace.” They further 
promised to remain united “by the bonds of a true and indi¬ 
visible fraternity,” and “on all occasions and in all places” to 
lend each other aid and assistance. Several other European 
sovereigns later signed this pledge. Though a praiseworthy 
attempt to apply much needed principles of morality to inter¬ 
national relations, the Holy Alliance never had any real impor¬ 
tance. Most statesmen agreed with Metternich’s characteriza¬ 
tion of it as a “loud-sounding nothing.” It soon faded into 
oblivion, being replaced by the far more practical Concert of 
Europe. 

The five leading powers, Great Britain, France, Prussia, 
Austria, and Russia, who formed the Concert, did not keep peace 
The European throughout the nineteenth century. Their con- 
Concert flicting interests more than once led to hostilities 

between them. Nevertheless, they sometimes worked together 
for peaceful purposes. In 1815 they signed a treaty promising 
never to declare war against Switzerland or to send troops 
across the Swiss borders. The little Alpine republic thus 
became a neutral buffer state. In 1839 they similarly guaran¬ 
teed by a treaty the independence and perpetual neutrality of 
Belgium. In 1856 they signed the Declaration of Paris, pro¬ 
viding rules for the conduct of warfare on the seas. By the 
Geneva Convention of 1864 they undertook to regulate war¬ 
fare by land and organized the International Red Cross with 
branches in every civilized country. Nor were the activities 
of the Concert confined to Europe. It neutralized the Suez 
Canal (§ 150), cooperated with Japan and the United States 
to suppress the Chinese “Boxers” (§ 153), and held conferences 
from time to time to deal with the problems presented by Euro¬ 
pean expansion in Africa and Asia. 

The nations also began to resort increasingly to arbitration 
as a means of settling differences between them. Over two 
International hundred awards were made by arbitral courts dur- 
arbitration i n g the nineteenth century, and every one was 
carried out. After 1900 many leading countries made treaties 


International Organization 6n 

with each other, pledging themselves to submit to arbitration 
all controversies except those affecting national honor or vital 
interests (such as independence). Argentina and Chile went 
still further and in 1902 bound themselves to arbitrate every 
dispute which might arise between them. The United States, 
while Mr. W. J. Bryan was Secretary of State in President 



The Christ of the Andes 


Erected in 1904 to commemorate the peaceful settlement of a boundary dispute between 
Argentina and Chile. The monument stands at an elevation of twelve thousand feet and 
above the tunnel on the Trans-Andean Railroad. The figure of the Christ, twenty-six feet 
high, was cast from bronze cannon. A tablet on the pedestal reads: “ Sooner shall these 
mountains crumble into dust than the people of Argentina and Chile break the peace which 
they have sworn to maintain at the feet of Christ the Redeemer.” 


Wilson’s administration (1913-1915), made no less than thirty 
treaties with foreign countries, requiring the submission of dis¬ 
putes to impartial inquiry by an international body and a delay 
of a full year before going to war. Nearly all of these “Bryan 
treaties” are still in effect. 

International arbitration received a great impetus at the two 
peace conferences of 1899 and 1907 (§ 167). The The Hague 
assembled powers could not agree to limit arma- Tribunal 
ments, but besides revising the laws of war they set up at The 


6l2 


International Relations 


Hague a court of arbitration, to which the nations might resort. 
The Hague Tribunal settled a number of disputes which in 
earlier days might have led to war. It thus marked a distinct 
advance toward international peace. 

Then came the World War. Austria-Hungary and Germany 
abruptly withdrew from the European Concert, rejected every 
An interna- proposal for arbitration, and, after hostilities began, 
tionai league violated treaty obligations and the recognized 
usages of warfare, both by land and sea. The Allies, in conse¬ 
quence, became the defenders of international law, as well as 
the champions of nationality and democracy. Their enormous 
sacrifices during the struggle promised to be in vain, unless some 
means could be found to preserve the sanctity of treaties and 
prevent future aggressive wars. An international league began 
to seem, not a utopian scheme, but rather a practical necessity 
for the peace and security of mankind. Such thoughts as these 
were repeatedly expressed by responsible statesmen among 
the Allies, especially by Mr. Lloyd George and President 
Wilson. 

171 . The League of Nations and the “ World Court ” 

The League of Nations came into being in 1919, at the Peace 
Conference of Paris. Its constitution, or covenant, was 
Organization written in large part by President Wilson. The 
of the league league consists of an assembly, in which each mem¬ 
ber has one vote; a council, made up of representatives of 
Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan, together 
with representatives of nine other members of the league ; and a 
permanent secretariat, or office, at Geneva, Switzerland. The 
assembly holds a meeting once a year at Geneva, for the admis¬ 
sion of new members and for the discussion of matters of inter¬ 
national interest. Such power as the league possesses is in the 
hands of the members of the council, who meet every few 
months and decide on measures to be taken in the name of the 
league. All important decisions of the council require a unani¬ 
mous vote. 



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614 


International Relations 


Membership 


Non-members 


Forty-one nations 1 were represented by delegates at the first 
meeting of the Assembly of the league in 1920. Accessions to 
the league were made at later meetings, until its 
membership now includes fifty-six nations. For 
the future, any self-governing state, dominion, or colony may be 
enrolled by a two-thirds vote of the members. Any member may, 
after two years’ notice, withdraw from the league, if at the time 
of withdrawal it has fulfilled all its international obligations. 

The only important countries remaining outside the league 
are Russia, Turkey, Mexico, and the United States. The 
Central Powers were excluded at first as having 
been so recently enemy states. Russia and Mexico 
were not invited to join because they had not set up stable 
governments. The United States declined membership owing 
to the opposition of many patriotic Americans who believed 
that certain features of the Covenant, if accepted by this coun¬ 
try, would involve us deeply in foreign entanglements and so 
make it impossible to preserve our policy of aloofness from 
European affairs. The absence of these great and powerful 
countries seriously limits the authority of the league. It can¬ 
not act with entire efficiency in European affairs until Russia 
is admitted and assigned a seat on the council. Nor can it 
become in the fullest sense a world organization as long as the 
United States continues to be a non-member. 

The league serves as a convenient agency for dealing with 
matters that concern all its members, such as the prevention 
The league an d con ^ ro ^ disease, the regulation of the traffic in 
and inter- dangerous drugs, and the relief of suffering through¬ 
out the world. A very important department of 
the league, the International Labor Office, is con¬ 
cerned with the betterment of industrial conditions in the various 
countries: The league also has a Committee on Intellectual 
Cooperation, made up- of distinguished European scholars. 
They maintain a permanent institute at Paris. 


national 

cooperation 


1 Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, and India are each 
represented in the Assembly of the league, as well as the United Kingdom. The 
Irish Free State is also a member of the league. 


The League of Nations and the “ World Court ” 615 

As long as nations considered themselves entirely sovereign, 
able to fight when and how and whom they pleased, there was 
nothing to prevent a strong country from attack- The league 
ing and perhaps conquering a weak country. The and inter¬ 
league has begun to deal with this situation. The natlonal peace 
Covenant declares that a war or even a threat of war is a matter 
of concern to all the members of the league. Should a dispute 


1 



A gift of Andrew Carnegie for the use of the Hague Tribunal and for international con¬ 
ferences. It is also the seat of the new “ World Court.” 

likely to result in war arise between two or more member states, 
it must either be submitted to arbitration or to inquiry and 
report by the council. No member may go to war until three 
months after such a report has been made. Should a member 
take up arms, in disregard of these agreements, it will be con¬ 
sidered as having committed an act of aggression toward all 
other members. They must then sever trade and financial 
relations with it, thus subjecting it to a sort of international 
“boycott.” A number of international disputes have arisen 
since the league was organized. In former days they might 
easily have led to hostilities between European powers. The 









6i6 


International Relations 


league has managed to settle them peacefully, thus heading off 
or snuffing out several wars. These would have been minor wars 
at first, but no one can tell how great they might have become 
before they ended. By its labors in the cause of peace the 
league is accustoming the nations to accept some international 
control over their foreign relations. 

The Covenant of the league provided for the creation of a 
Permanent Court of International Justice to make easier the 
The “ World peaceful settlement of disputes between nations. 
Court” Such a “World Court” was set up at The Hague, 

Holland, in 1922. It consists of eleven judges and four deputy- 
judges chosen by the council and assembly of the league and 
representing different races, nationalities, languages, and legal 
codes. All the major countries, except Russia, Turkey, and 
the United States, and most of the minor countries belong to 
the court. 

The Hague Tribunal (§ 170) is not a court in the proper sense 
of the word, being merely a panel of names from which arbitra- 
Th “ W id torS ma ^ se l ecte( i when desired by various coun- 
Court” and tries. The “ World Court,” on the other hand, is 
the Hague a body of permanent judges holding regular ses- 
sions m a definite place and at definite times. It 
may hear and decide any question relating to a treaty or to a 
matter of international law which is voluntarily submitted to it 
by the parties concerned. 1 The court also acts as legal adviser 
to the League of Nations. 


172. Disarmament and the Abolition of War 

All lovers of peace realize that the setting up of such agen¬ 
cies as the League of Nations and the “World Court” must be 
The Washing- accompanied by partial or complete disarmament 
ton Confer- of the nations, if war is to be forever abolished from 
the civilized world. The United States became 
the pioneer of this movement by organizing a Conference on 
the Limitation of Armament. It met at Washington in 1921- 

1 Thirty-three states have signed the so-called compulsory arbitration clause by 
which they agree in advance to accept the arbitration of the World Court. 


GENEVA 

Geneva, once the residence of Calvin and Rousseau, and now the seat of the League of Nations, is situated on beautiful Lake Geneva. The Rhone, which rises in the 
lake, flows through the city under seven bridges. The gray and barren rocks (shown in the background of the picture) are overtopped by distant Mont Blanc. 



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Disarmament and the Abolition of War 617 


1922. Nine nations (the United States, Great Britain, France, 
Italy, Belgium, Holland, Portugal, Japan, and China) took 
part in it. The five principal naval powers represented 
undertook to scrap or convert to peaceful uses a large number 
of their capital ships (battleships and heavy cruisers), and so 
to limit future construction of such ships that after a ten-year 
building “holiday” the United States and Great Britain should 
have an equal tonnage, Japan sixty per cent of the tonnage of 
either of these countries, and France and Italy a still smaller 
amount. The five powers also signed a treaty by which they 
agreed not to use submarines as commerce destroyers, as had 
been done by Germany in the World War. 

The Washington Conference failed to secure any limitation 
of naval armament in the shape of light cruisers, submarines, or 
aircraft, all of which seem likely to play an impor- The Geneva 
tant part in future warfare. An attempt by the Conference 
United States, Great Britain, and Japan to reach an agreement 
limiting naval rivalry in these arms was made at Geneva in 
1927, but the conference broke up without accomplishing any¬ 
thing. Competition for mastery of the seas on the part of the 
leading nations thus continues, in spite of the enormous burden 
which it lays on taxpayers and its obvious danger to the peace 
of the world. 

The problem of general disarmament, or at least of greatly 
reducing the huge land, air, and naval forces of the principal 

countries, has not yet been solved. The League of T 

. 0 The League 

Nations is at work on it, paving the way for a dis- 0 f Nations 

armament conference to meet in 1928 or 1929. ^ lt disarma ” 
Infinite patience and years of ceaseless toil will be 
required before a satisfactory outcome can be reached. The 
nations must feel themselves safe against attack by their neigh¬ 
bors before they will abolish or cut down materially the mili¬ 
tary forces on which they have always relied for protection. 
The problem of general disarmament is thus bound up with 
that of security. 

An encouraging step in the direction of security was taken in 
1925, when representatives of Great Britain, France, Germany, 


6i 8 


International Relations 


Italy, and other countries, assembled at Locarno, Switzerland, 
entered into a series of agreements intended to lessen the danger 
The Locarno of future warfare in Europe. These include 
pacts several arbitration treaties, in particular, one by 

which France and Germany promised to arbitrate all difficulties 
which cannot be settled by the usual methods of diplomacy. 
The two countries (and also Belgium) further agreed that the 
frontiers between them as fixed by the Treaty of Versailles in 
1919 should be inviolable, and that they would never again resort 
to war against each other. Great Britain and Italy guaranteed 
this treaty, promising to use their influence and, if necessary, 
their military force against any one of the three nations which 
should violate it. The Locarno agreements thus remove the 
Rhineland area (Alsace-Lorraine) out of the realm of inter¬ 
national dispute, protect Belgium against unprovoked attack by 
her powerful neighbors, and provide for international arbitration. 
They ought to make for peace on the war-torn Continent. 

The obligations assumed by members of the League of Nations, 
the Locarno pacts, and the “Bryan treaties” all make it more 
Abolition of difficult than ever before for nations to fight one 

war another, but they do not abolish war. Thought¬ 

ful men, impressed by the horrors of past conflicts and fearful 
of fresh horrors to come, are now asking if armed conflict be¬ 
tween the nations cannot be abolished, as cannibalism, human 
sacrifice, witchcraft persecution, slavery, and other anti-social 
practices have been abolished by the common sense and common 
wisdom of mankind. The question thus raised is at bottom a 
moral one. Conferences of statesmen and diplomats, pacts, 
treaties, and other engagements will not of themselves secure 
permanent peace. That depends on the growth of a public 
sentiment which condemns all war except in self-defense, in 
short, all aggressive war, as a crime against humanity. We 
must “seek peace, and pursue it.” 1 When the world’s peoples 
agree to follow in their dealings with one another the rules of 
morality which they obey among themselves, international 
relations must become more and more like those between citizens 
1 Psalms, xxxiv, 14. 


Federation 619 

of the same nation, with law, order, justice, and peace prevail¬ 
ing among men of good will. 

173. Federation 

The future close association of European countries, pre¬ 
venting the outbreak of war between them and leading to their 
more cordial and intimate relations, may be international 
brought about through the agency of the League associations 
of Nations. There are, however, actually in existence two 
international associations which have found in federation the 
means of combining states and peoples under a central govern¬ 
ment, while at the same time keeping all that is desired or 
desirable in the way of local independence. One of these asso¬ 
ciations is the British Commonwealth of Nations, 1 and the 
other is the United States of America. 

The group of self-governing colonies, or Dominions, is small 
in number, but it includes Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, 
New Zealand, and South Africa. Their govern- The 
ment closely parallels that of the United Kingdom. Dominions 
In each colony the Crown is represented by a governor or gover¬ 
nor-general ; the House of Lords, by an upper chamber; and 
the House of Commons, by a popularly elected assembly. 
Each one has also a prime minister and the cabinet system. 
Great Britain controls the foreign relations of these five colonies, 
but otherwise allows them practically complete freedom in 
matters of legislation. Without interference, they tax them¬ 
selves, impose tariff duties, even on British goods, control im¬ 
migration, raise their own armies, support their own navies, 
and have their own national flags. They are, in fact, “ colonial 
nations.” 

The nineteenth century was well advanced before Great 
Britain learned the right policy to adopt toward the “colonials” 
in North America, Australasia, and South Africa. British 
The rising side of democratic sentiment, as seen in colonial policy 
the reform of parliamentary representation (§ 143), more than 

1 A more appropriate term than the old name “British Empire,” when applied to 
the Dominions, or self-governing colonies. 


620 


International Relations 


anything else stirred the British people to extend full rights to 
their colonies. Political emancipation at home had a natural re¬ 
sult in political emancipation abroad. Canada first received self- 
government in the ’forties of the last century (§ 164) and since 
then Great Britain has bestowed the same precious gift upon 
her South African and Australasian dominions (§§ 150, 156). 

This change of British colonial policy, which has converted 
so much of the empire into a commonwealth of free states, is 
Greater one of the outstanding facts of modern history. 

Britain The vast extent of the Dominions, their enormous 

resources, and their rapidly growing population give promise of 
unlimited development in the future. They form a Greater 
Britain for the perpetuation through the ages of the language, 
laws, and institutions of the mother country. 

The Constitution of the United States (§ 123) reserved to the 
Federal Government certain specified powers relating to war and 
The Federal peace, regulation of commerce, taxation, coinage, 
Government p 0S t 0 ffi ce s, patents, copyrights, and other matters 
which could not be satisfactorily cared for by the states. The 
authority of the Federal Government was not made dependent 
upon the goodwill of the states, as the authority of the League 
of Nations depends upon the goodwill of the nations in the league. 
Congress enacts laws binding on citizens throughout the Union. 
The President executes the laws through federal officials and 
courts in every state. The Supreme Court (which might be 
called the earliest Permanent Court of International Justice) 
settles disputes between states or between them and the Federal 
Government, and when Congress passes any law in excess of 
the powers granted by the Constitution, declares that law null 
and void. The Constitution thus established much more than 
a league of states; it established a real federation. 

There were in 1789 only thirteen states, occupying the Atlantic 
„ . , coast westward to the Alleghenies. There are now 

States an forty-eight states, and they reach to the Pacific 

(§ 162). In 1789 and for many years thereafter 
they were acutely jealous of one another and of 
the Federal Government. The attempt to preserve “state’s 


“ interna¬ 
tional nation ” 



081 o 09L o 0Zt o 06 o 09 o 08 o 0 o 08 o 09 o 06 o 0SX o 09I o 08I 













































































































































1 

















’ 


* 


















































































Federation 


621 


rights” led to the succession of the slave-holding states and the 
Civil War of 1861-1865. The triumph of the North in that 
war gave a new value and meaning to the principle of federal¬ 
ism. It meant that there were not to be in central North 
America two independent countries with customs barriers be¬ 
tween them, competition in armaments, rivalries, antipathies, 
and possible wars, such as have long vexed Europe. The United 
States was to continue to be one country — an “ international 
nation.” 



The states banded pink were Union slave-holding states; those banded green were Con¬ 
federate states that seceded after the Civil War began. 


The British Commonwealth of Nations may be likened to a 
family, with all the close ties that exist between members of a 
family but without fixed rules controlling it. No British and 
machinery of federation exists in the British Com- American 
monwealth. Up to the present the ties of affection 
and common interest have been strong enough to 
keep the Dominions faithful to the mother country, but there is 
nothing to prevent them from withdrawing and setting up as 
independent states. They would probably do so, were Great 




















622 


International Relations 


Britain to oppose them on some serious matter of policy. The 
United States, on the other hand, affords an example of a feder¬ 
ation with a definite constitution and body of laws regulating 
the relations of the Federal Government to the several states. 
The Union so formed is perpetual, and no state may secede from 
it. These two great federations of English-speaking peoples have 
thus developed along very different lines. Their successful opera¬ 
tion, together with the growth of the League of Nations, points 
the way to some wider union embracing all civilized peoples — 
“the Parliament of mankind, the Federation of the world.” 

Studies 

i. Explain: Holy Alliance; Concert of Europe; Hague Tribunal; 
Covenant of the League of Nations; and “World Court.” 2. Mention 
three leading causes of European wars during the last century. What other 
causes might be mentioned ? 3. Trace the attitude of official Christianity 

toward war from the first Christian centuries to the present time. 4. What 
do you understand by international law ? How does it differ from ordinary 
law? 5. Look up in an encyclopedia an account of the life and work of 
Hugo Grotius. 6. Why might the Holy Alliance be described as a “mu¬ 
tual insurance society of sovereigns”? 7. To what extent was the Con¬ 
cert of Europe a peace league? 8. Explain the present organization and 
functions of the League of Nations. 9. Why did not the United States 
join the League of Nations? What other important countries are non¬ 
members? 10. Compare the “World Court” with the Supreme Court of 
the United States. n. Compare the abolition of private warfare toward 
the close of the Middle Ages with recent movements to abolish public war¬ 
fare. 12. “The way to obtain peace is to prepare for war.” Does this 
statement seem to be justified by the experience of European peoples during 
the last half-century? Is it truer to say that “the way to obtain peace is to 
prepare for peace ” ? 13. On the map (facing page 620) trace the growth of 

the British Empire. 14. “ Doubtless the most significant and momentous 
fact of modern history is the wide diffusion of the English race, the sweep 
of its commerce, the dominance of its institutions, its imperial control of the 
destinies of half the globe.” Comment on this statement. 15. Why may 
the United States be described as an “international nation”? 


m* 



LINCOLN 

The statue by St. Gaudens 
Lincoln Park, Chicago 




























CHAPTER XIX 


SOCIAL BETTERMENT 
174 . Humanitarian Movements 

The “brotherhood of man” was taught by Hebrew prophets 
(§ 27), by the Greek Stoics (§ 66), and by the early Christians 
(§ 69), and the medieval Church always preached The social 
the natural equality of all men, if not on earth, at conscience 
any rate in heaven (§81). Our own age, however, is marked by 
a great growth of humanitarian sentiment. Increased inter¬ 
course between civilized peoples not only broadens their outlook 
but also widens their sympathies. Feelings of human brother¬ 
hood, once limited to members of one’s clan, tribe, city, or 
nation, expand to include all mankind. The march of democ¬ 
racy throughout the world works in the same direction, by 
breaking down the barriers between classes of men and thus 
making it easier for each one of us to realize that he is in some 
degree his brother’s keeper. There develops a social conscience' 
which emphasizes the obligations of the strong toward the weak 
and protests against the oppression of any members of the world 
community by any others. Let us consider some of its mani¬ 
festations during the past century. 

Little more than one hundred years ago the slave trade was 
generally regarded as a legitimate business. Hardly any one 
thought it wrong to kidnap or purchase African African slave 
negroes, pack them on shipboard, where many trade 
died in the stifling holds, and carry them to the West Indies or 
the American mainland to be sold as slaves. It is estimated 
that more than three million negroes were brought to the New 
World and that at least a quarter of a million more perished on 

623 


624 


Social Betterment 


the way thither. This shameful traffic reached its greatest pro¬ 
portions after the English had begun to encroach upon the West 
Indies and to develop, far more thoroughly than the Spaniards 
had done, the cultivation of cotton, tobacco, and sugar cane 
(§ 161). Cheap slave labor seemed to be essential for the con¬ 
tinued prosperity of the plantations. 

Agitation for the prohibition of the African slave trade began 
toward the close of the eighteenth century. The philanthro- 
Abolition of pists naturally met much opposition from those 
the slave who profited so richly from the business. Den¬ 
mark was the first country to declare it unlawful. 
Great Britain and the United States took the same step in 
1807-1808. 1 The Congress of Vienna, to its credit, pronounced 
against the traffic which had so long desolated Africa and 
degraded Europe, and in later years the Continental nations, 
one after another, agreed that it should no longer enjoy the 
protection of their flags. Since the last decade of the nine¬ 
teenth century the European powers have also taken action to 
stamp out what remains of the slave trade in the interior of 
Africa. 

Slavery had all but died out in Christian lands by the close 
of the Middle Ages. It revived, on a much larger scale, after 
Abolition of the era of geographical discovery, which opened 
slavery U p Africa as a source of slaves and America as a 

field for their profitable employment. The French revolution¬ 
ists abolished slavery in the colonies of France, but Napoleon 
restored it. Great Britain in 1833 passed an act to free the 
slaves in the British West Indies, paying one hundred million 
dollars to their former masters as compensation. This measure 
is a monument to the labors of William Wilberforce, who for 
nearly half a century devoted his wealth, his energies, and his 
powerful oratory to the cause of the oppressed negroes. Within 
the next thirty years slavery peacefully disappeared in the 
colonial possessions of France, Portugal, and Holland, but in 
the United States only at the cost of civil war. Brazil abolished 

1 The United States, under one of the clauses of the Constitution (Article I, Sec¬ 
tion 9) had permitted the importation of negro slaves until 1808. 


Humanitarian Movements 625 

slavery as recently as 1888, but it still exists in the Christian 
state of Abyssinia, as well as in Arabia and China. About five 
million men, women, and children are held as slaves in these 
three countries. The final extinction of slavery throughout the 
world is a task which has recently been undertaken by the 
League of Nations. 

The penal code of eighteenth-century Europe must be de¬ 
scribed as barbarous. Torture of an accused person, in order 
to obtain a confession, usually preceded his trial. The old 
Only a few nations, Great Britain among them, P enal code 
forbade its use. Prisons were private property, and the in¬ 
mates, whether inno¬ 
cent or guilty, had to 
pay their keeper for 
food and other neces¬ 
saries. Men, women, 
and children were 
herded together, the 
hardened criminals 
with the first offend¬ 
ers. Branding, flog¬ 
ging, and exposure in 
the pillory formed 
common punishments. 

Death was the pun¬ 
ishment for murder, arson, burglary, horse-stealing, theft, for¬ 
gery, counterfeiting, and many other crimes. The British code 
included over two hundred offenses for which the penalty was 
death. A man (or a woman) might be hanged for stealing as 
little as five shillings from a shop or for picking a pocket to 
the value of a single shilling. Transportation to America or 
to Australia was often substituted, however, for the death pen¬ 
alty. Executions took place in public, on the mistaken theory 
that to see them would deter from crime. 

The great name in penal reform is that of the Italian Beccaria, 
whose work, On Crimes and Punishments , appeared in 1764* 
It bore early fruit in the general abolition of torture and of such 














626 


Social Betterment 


ferocious punishments as burning alive, breaking on the wheel, 
and drawing and quartering. Penal reform in France was has- 
Reform of the tened by the Revolution. Under the leadership of 
penal code sir Samuel Romilly Great Britain began in the early 
nineteenth century to reduce the number of capital offenses, until 
only high treason, piracy, and murder remained. One conse- 



Stocks 

From an old manuscript in the British Museum, London. 


quence of the reform was a marked lessening of crime, though 
judges and other conservative persons had predicted just the re¬ 
verse. Capital punishment has now been abolished by a number 
of European countries, including Italy, Portugal, Holland, Nor¬ 
way, and Rumania, as well as by Brazil and several other Latin 
American countries. 

Prison reform accompanied the reform of the penal code. 
One of the leaders of this humanitarian movement was John 
Prison Howard, who devoted himself to improving the 

reform prisons of England and Wales. Another leader 

was a Quakeress, Mrs. Elizabeth Fry. Not content with Great 
Britain as a field for labor, she extended her efforts to all the 
principal European countries. Much has been done within 
the past century to improve sanitary conditions in prisons, to 
abolish striped clothing, the lock-step, and other humiliating 
practices in the treatment of prisoners, and, by means of juve¬ 
nile courts and reformatories, to separate first offenders from 
hardened criminals. Even as regards the latter, the idea is now 
to make confinement less a punishment than a means of develop¬ 
ing the convict’s self-respect and manhood, so that he may 
return to free life a useful member of society. Prison reform in 








Humanitarian Movements 627 

the various countries has been much advanced by international 
congresses. 

The modern attitude toward the feeble-minded and the in¬ 
sane contrasts sharply with earlier ideas concerning them. 
Mentally defective persons are no longer regarded Treatment of 
with amusement or contempt, but are rather con- defectives 
sidered as pitiful victims of heredity or of circumstances for 
which they were not responsible. Every civilized country now 
provides asylums for their 
proper care under medical su¬ 
pervision. There are also 
special schools for the benefit 
of the blind and of the deaf 
and dumb. 

An increasing sympathy with 
the brute creation also char¬ 
acterizes our age. Treatment of 
The British So- ammals 
ciety for the Prevention of 
Cruelty to Animals was founded 
in 1824. Ten years later Par¬ 
liament did away with bull 
baiting and cock fighting, 
which had long been favorite 
amusements of the lower classes, 
and prohibited cruelty to all domestic animals. Similar legis¬ 
lation has been enacted on the Continent, as well as in the 
United States. 

The crusade against alcoholism further illustrates humani¬ 
tarian progress. The use of intoxicants, formerly uncon- 
demned, more and more comes under moral Liquor 
approval. During the World War a number of control 
European countries restricted the manufacture 
and consumption of alcoholic liquors, and since the war public 
regulation has continued in one form or another. Sweden and 
Norway put the liquor trade (excluding that in beer and light 
wines) under the control of companies which are themselves 



Elizabeth Fry 


628 


Social Betterment 


controlled by the government. Soviet Russia and Poland have 
a state monopoly of the liquor trade. Finland and Iceland 
have adopted complete prohibition of the import or manufacture 
of liquor containing more than a very small amount of alcohol 
(2^ per cent). 

Abolition of the liquor traffic in the United States was long 
agitated by the Prohibition Party, by private organizations, 
Prohibition in suc ^ as Woman’s Christian Temperance Union 
the United (under the presidency of Miss Frances E. Willard), 
and more recently by the Anti-Saloon League. 
Maine was the first state to adopt legal prohibition. Many 
states in the Middle West and the 
South afterward took the same ac¬ 
tion. Prohibition sentiment at length 
led to a constitutional amendment, 
forbidding the manufacture, sale, or 
transportation of intoxicating liquors 
throughout the country, and their 
importation into it. This Eighteenth 
Amendment was ratified in 1918-1919 
by more than three-fourths of the 
state legislatures. It went into effect 
one year after ratification. 



William Booth 


175. Charity and Philanthropy 

Efforts to relieve poverty and suf¬ 
fering have given rise to charity organ¬ 
ization societies, associations for improving the condition of 
the poor, “community chests,” dispensaries, free clinics, free 
Philanthropic hospital wards, anti-tuberculosis leagues, fresh- 
agencies air f un ds, anc j numerous other philanthropic 
agencies in both Europe and America. The Salvation Army 
was started in Great Britain by William Booth, a Methodist 
minister, with the idea of bettering both the physical and spirit¬ 
ual condition of those who are not reached by other religious 
bodies. Since its formation in 1878 the Salvation Army has 
spread to the United States and other countries. The Young 


Charity and Philanthropy 629 

Men’s Christian Association also arose in Great Britain, but 
it is now well known all over the world. 

The Red Cross owes its inspiration to a young Swiss, Henri 
D unant, who had witnessed one of the bloody battles of the 
Austro-Sardinian War (§ 141), and whose experi- T he Red 
ence prompted him to urge the formation of relief Cross 
societies for the care of sick and wounded soldiers. The result 
was an international gathering at Geneva in 1864 and the fram¬ 
ing of an agreement to lessen the horrors of modern warfare. 
The ten states which origi¬ 
nally ratified the Geneva 
Convention have since been 
joined by practically all civ¬ 
ilized powers. To carry out 
the convention the Interna¬ 
tional Red Cross Society was 
formed, with headquarters 
at Geneva and branches in 
the various countries. Henri 
Dunant’s name is scarcely 
known to-day, but the organi¬ 
zation which he did most to 
found has now become a world¬ 
wide institution for the re¬ 
lief of all suffering, whether 
caused by war or by pesti¬ 
lence, floods, fire, or other calamities. 

Princely and more than princely benefactions for charitable 
and educational purposes have been made during recent years 

by men of wealth, particularly in the United 
_ * 1 „ . . . ... Foundations 

States. Andrew Carnegie devoted to public pur¬ 
poses over $350,000,000. His largest and most notable endow¬ 
ment was for the Carnegie Corporation. Its income is to be 
used for promoting civilization in whatever way seems best to 
the trustees. The gifts of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., exceed 
$500,000,000. The Rockefeller Foundation, which was estab¬ 
lished “to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the 



Henri Dunant 








630 


Social Betterment 


Missions 


world,” is his most extensive endowment. The Rhodes Scholar¬ 
ships at Oxford, endowed by Cecil Rhodes (§ 150), and the 
Nobel Prizes (§ 169) are also typical of the great international 
benefactions of our time. 

The conversion of the non-Christian world is the stupendous 
task to which Christian peoples have addressed 
themselves since the Middle Ages. The work of 
Roman Catholic missionaries in Christianizing most of the 
Filipinos and the Indians of Latin America and Canada was 
largely accomplished in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 
Several Protestant denominations founded missionary societies 
in the eighteenth century, and by the middle of the nineteenth 
century almost every branch of Protestantism, both in Europe 
and America, had representatives throughout the non-Christian 
world. The number of Christians attached to missions is 
reckoned at 10,000,000, about equally divided between Catholic 
and Protestant converts. 

Missionaries establish schools and colleges, build hospitals, 
Missions and introduce scientific medicine and sanitation, fa- 
civiiization miliarize the natives with inventions and dis¬ 
coveries, and often succeed in stamping out cruel superstitions, 
together with such practices as cannibalism and human sacri¬ 
fice. Native converts become, in turn, the means of extend¬ 
ing the benefits of modern civilization among their countrymen. 
The effect of missionary enterprise is therefore enormous, even 
when conversions are relatively few. We may safely include 
Christian missions among the most important of all agencies for 
bringing backward peoples into the common brotherhood of 
mankind. 


176. Emancipation of Women and Children 

Woman’s position in Europe a century ago was what it had 
been in the Middle Ages — a position of dependence on man. 
Disabilities She received little or no education, seldom engaged 
of woman i n anything but housework, and for support relied 
on husband, father, or brother. After marriage she became 
subject to her husband. In Great Britain she could neither 


Emancipation of Women and Children 631 


make a will nor enter into a contract without his consent. All 
her possessions belonged to him. Any money that she earned 
or inherited was his and might be taken to pay his debts. The 
law even deprived her of control over her own children. Similar 
disabilities rested upon Continental women. 

The humanitarian sentiment evoked by the French Revo¬ 
lution began by freeing slave and serf, but presently demanded 
the emancipation of woman also. The demand Woman’s 
received a powerful impetus when modern indus- ri £ hts 
trialism opened new employments to woman outside the home 
and thus lessened her economic dependence on man. The 
agitation for woman’s rights has so far succeeded that most 
civilized countries now permit her to own property, engage in 
business, and enter the professions on her own account. Her 
educational opportunities have also steadily widened. Wesleyan 
College, Georgia, and Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, Massa¬ 
chusetts, were the pioneer colleges for women in America. Both 
were incorporated in 1836. Oberlin College (1833) was the 
first private institution and the University of Iowa (1856) 
was the first state university to adopt co-education. The 
higher educational institutions of Great Britain, France, 
Italy, and most other European countries permit women to 
hear lectures and to receive degrees on the same terms as 
men. 

Woman suffrage scored its first victories in Scandinavia. 
During the decade before the World War, both Finland and 
Norway permitted women to vote at general elec- Woman 
tions. Denmark and Sweden extended voting suffrage 
privileges to women shortly after the outbreak of abroad 
the war. Nearly all the Continental countries now h;ave woman 
suffrage, the only conspicuous exceptions being France, Italy, 
Spain, Portugal, and Bulgaria. The Equal Franchise Act, passed 
by the British Parliament in 1918, gave the vote to women 
over thirty years of age. This age limit will probably soon be 
lowered to twenty-one years, to accord with that for male 
electors. Australia, New Zealand, and Canada have woman 
suffrage, as well as Mexico and China. 


632 


Social Betterment 


As far back as 1869, when the Fifteenth Amendment to the 
Constitution, granting suffrage to negroes, was before Con- 
Woman gress, Miss Susan B. Anthony and her associates 
suffrage in the appealed to the legislators for the recognition of 
United States women as we n. The appeal was denied. The 

women then organized the National Woman Suffrage Associa¬ 
tion and began a campaign of education to convince thinking 
people of the justice of their cause. Years passed without 

much apparent progress being 
made. Wyoming, when admitted 
to statehood, gave the ballot to 
women, and by 1918 fourteen 
other states had done the same. 
Finally, the constitutional amend¬ 
ment for woman suffrage (some¬ 
times called the “Susan B. An¬ 
thony Amendment”)? which had 
been constantly before Congress 
for forty years, received the ap¬ 
proval of that body and was 
speedily ratified by three-fourths 
After a photograph taken at the age of 48. of the States in I92O. With its 

ratification the United States has 
established complete political democracy. 

The divorce laws of the Christian world exhibit much variety. 
Some Roman Catholic countries in Europe (including Italy and 
Spain) preserve the religious conception of mar¬ 
riage as a sacrament and therefore do not allow 
divorce under any circumstances. The same is true of most 
Latin American states. Countries adhering to the Greek 
Church allow divorce. Those governed or influenced by the 
Code Napoleon , in particular, France, Belgium, Holland, Swit¬ 
zerland, and Germany, do the same. Divorce is not common in 
Great Britain, and it is rare in Canada. The laws of the United 
States present no uniformity, some states granting divorce on 
much easier terms than others. The result has been a very 
marked annual increase in the number of divorces. In general, 



Susan B. Anthony 


Divorce 


Popular Education and the Higher Learning 633 


modern legislation tends to treat marriage as a civil contract and 
to permit the contract to be broken for immorality, cruelty, deser¬ 
tion, habitual drunkenness, and serious crime, that is, for such 
behavior of one party to the contract as makes married life 
unbearable for the other party. 

The decline of the husband’s power over his wife has been 
accompanied by a decline of the father’s authority over his 
children. Among the ancient Romans the father’s Emancipation 
control of his offspring was absolute, and their of children 
liberty was often sacrificed to his despotic rule (§ 46). The 
Roman idea of family obligations survived in Europe through 
the Middle Ages and still lingers in Latin countries at the pres¬ 
ent time. In Anglo-Saxon countries, on the other hand, both 
law and custom regard the grown-up child as independent of the 
father. Even his authority over minors is considered mainly 
in the light of guardianship. This liberal conception of paternal 
rights bids fair to prevail among all civilized peoples. 

177. Popular Education and the Higher Learning 

The beginnings of popular education reach back to the 
Reformation era, when elementary schools, supported by general 
taxa- Elementary 

tion, education in 
h p the United 
u e “ States 
gan 

to spring up in 
Germany, Hol¬ 
land, Scotland, and 
Puritan New Eng¬ 
land. This free 
common school 
system, which it 
is the glory of Boys’ Sports 

the reformers to An illustration in an old English edition (1659) of Comenius’s 
, 1 , Orbis Pictus (Illustrated World). This was the first picture book 

have established, ever ma( j e for children, and for a century it remained the most 
gradually spread popular school text in Europe. 




















634 


Social Betterment 



Secondary 
education in 
the United 
States 


throughout the United States during the nineteenth century 
and became entirely secular in character. No one did more 
to advance it in this country than Horace Mann. As secre¬ 
tary of the Massachusetts state board of education he estab¬ 
lished the first normal school for the training of teachers, and in 
his annual reports he argued persuasively that common schools 
are the pillars of democracy. 

The first American high school opened in Boston in 1821. 
It was for boys exclusively. The Massachusetts legislature, 

six years 
later, passed 
the first law 
requiring the 
establishment of high 
schools in cities and towns. 
Outside of this state great 
difficulties were met in 
setting up a high-school 
system. Secondary edu¬ 
cation was expensive and 
in the opinion of many 
persons needless. Why 
should taxes be levied, 
they asked, to teach the 
children “to make ac’s 
and pot-hooks and gabble 
parley-vous” ? In spite 
of all obstacles, however, the high-school movement has spread 
everywhere in the United States, until there are now many 




" ! Wh: 


First High School in the United 
States 

After an old print. 


thousands of such schools offering a four-year course and 
freely open to both boys and girls. The private preparatory 
schools and academies, with a four-year course, are also numer¬ 
ous. The present tendency to establish junior colleges practi¬ 
cally extends the high-scliool course to six years, by adding to 
it various subjects of collegiate grade. 

British statesmen for a long time looked with disfavor upon 
projects for public schools. Education, they thought, unfits 








Popular Education and the Higher Learning 635 


the people for manual labor and nourishes revolutionary ideas. 
“If a horse knew as much as a man, I should not like to be 
its rider,” declared a peer in Parliament, when PubUc schools 
voting against an appropriation for educational in Great 
purposes. After the extension of the suffrage to Bntam 
the working classes (§ 143), the government set up for the first 
time a national system of instruction. “We must educate our 
masters,” it was said. Elementary education in Great Britain 
is now free, compulsory, and secular. Many parents, however, 
prefer to send their children to private institutions under the 
control of the Anglican Church. The public and private schools 
together have well-nigh abolished illiteracy. 

The French revolutionists believed that “next to bread, edu¬ 
cation is the first need of the people.” They prepared an elabo¬ 
rate scheme for public schools, but never carried it Public 
into effect. Napoleon also aimed to set up a State schools 
system of education through primary and grammar m France 
grades to the lycees , or high schools. Lack of funds and of 
experienced lay teachers handicapped the emperor’s efforts, 
and at the close of the Napoleonic era the majority of French 
children still attended private schools conducted by the Church. 
France waited until the ’eighties of the last century before secur¬ 
ing a truly national system of education. The French govern¬ 
ment now appropriates large sums for educational purposes, and 
illiteracy is to-day practically non-existent. 

Prussia began to reorganize elementary education along 
modern lines as early as the reign of Frederick the Great and 
carried the work further during the Napoleonic era. Public schools 
The public school movement has made much prog- elsewhere on 
ress in other Continental countries during recent the Continent 
years. The percentage of illiteracy is still high in Italy and 
higher still in Spain, Portugal, and the Balkan states, while in 
Russia most of the peasants are too ignorant to sign their names. 
With such exceptions, however, Europe now agrees with the 
United States that at least the rudiments of an education should 
be the birthright of every child. 

The American state university, with its wide curriculum of 


636 


Social Betterment 


both liberal and practical subjects, is a nineteenth-century 
innovation. Previous to its establishment private denomina- 
The higher tional institutions prepared men for the ministry 
learning in the and a few other learned professions (§ 118). Sev- 
Umted States era j southern states (notably Virginia in 1817) 
were the first to found universities, but the movement really 
began with the chartering of the University of Michigan in 
1837, the year of the admission of that state into the Union. 
State universities, co-educational in character, are now found 
in nearly all the commonwealths. Their work is supplemented 
not only by numerous private colleges and universities, but also 
by the splendid benefactions associated with the names of 
Rockefeller and Carnegie. The rapid growth in student enroll¬ 
ment and the enormous increase in endowments are features of 
recent educational progress in the United States. 

England until the nineteenth century had only two universi¬ 
ties (Oxford and Cambridge), Scotland had four, Ireland one, 
The higher and Wales none. The democratic movement 

learning has led to a demand for a wider diffusion of knowl¬ 

edge and greater opportunities to acquire it, so that 
now there are twenty universities in the British Isles. New 
institutions of learning have been founded on the Continent and 
in South Africa, India, China, Japan, and Latin America, many 
of them since the World War. They form the most promising 
revival of learning since the rise of universities in the later 
Middle Ages (§ 90).. 


178. Religious Toleration and the Separation of Church and State 

The union of Church and State in Catholic countries and in 
Protestant countries after the Reformation seemed to make 
Beginnings of conformity to the established religion essential for 
religious all citizens. Non-conformity was considered a 
crime, which the government stood ready to punish 
by fines, imprisonment, or even death. A noteworthy step 
toward religious toleration was taken near the close of the 
sixteenth century, when French Protestants (Huguenots) were 


Religious Toleration 


637 



allowed to enjoy freedom of private worship everywhere and 
freedom of public worship in a large number of villages and 
towns. They received this right by the Edict of Nantes, which 
Henry IV issued in 1598. Louis XIV took it away from them 
in 1685, and for a long time thereafter the Huguenots were an 
outlawed and persecuted sect in France. The passage in Eng¬ 
land of the Toleration Act, by the same Parliament that enacted 
the Bill of Rights (§ in), marked a more permanent advance 
toward religious liberty. This measure relieved Protestant 
Dissenters, or Nonconformists, from all penalties for not 
attending the 
Anglican Church 
and granted 
them the right 
of public wor¬ 
ship in their 
own chapels. 

Roman Catho¬ 
lics were ex- Medal oe Louis XIV 

pressly excluded Commemorates the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The 
from the bene- °bverse bears a representation of “Louis the Great, the Most Chris¬ 
tian King,” the reverse contains a legend meaning “ Heresy Extin- 
fitS of the Act, guished.” 

but as a matter 

of fact they were allowed henceforth to hold their own services 
without disturbance. The Toleration Act commended itself to 
the American colonists, many of whom were Dissenters. It 
was generally reenacted by the colonial legislatures. 

Religious toleration has been steadily extended in more 
recent times. The First Amendment to the Constitution of 
the United States provides that Congress shall Spread of 
make no law prohibiting the “free exercise of re- religious 
ligion.” The French revolutionists, in the Declara- toleratlon 
tion of tfie Rights of Man (§ 136), announced that no one 
should be disturbed on account of his religious opinions, pro¬ 
vided he did not thereby trouble public order. It may be said, 
broadly, that throughout the Christian world the various 
churches have now abandoned the practice of compulsion in 




6 3 8 


Social Betterment 


religion. Men of different beliefs have found that they can 
live peaceably side by side with one another in the same 
country. 

The Church in the Middle Ages controlled, or tried to con¬ 
trol, the State, upon the theory that temporal as well as spiritual 
authority is derived from the pope. The Refor- 

Separation of ... . . . 

Church and mation, in those countries where it succeeded, 

Ne mere ly substituted a number of separate national 

churches for the one Church of Rome. To Roger 
Williams and William Penn in the seventeenth century belongs 
the honor of having founded in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, 
respectively, the first political communities where religious 
matters were taken entirely out of the hands of the civil govern¬ 
ment. The ideas of Williams and Penn found expression in the 
First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. 
Congress is forbidden to make any law “respecting an estab¬ 
lishment of religion.” This means that the Federal Government 
cannot appropriate money for the support of any church. This 
restriction does not bind the several states, but most of their 
constitutions repeat the federal prohibition. Church and State 
are absolutely separate in Canada, as well as in Mexico, Brazil, 
and some of the smaller Latin American countries. 

The separation of Church and State prevails in Australia, 
South Africa, and other parts of the British Empire. The 
Disestablish- Liberal Party under Gladstone disestablished the 
ment in the Anglican Church in Ireland and under Lloyd 
George disestablished it in Wales. The French 
revolutionists separated Church and State, but Napoleon’s 
Concordat with the pope again made Roman Catholicism the 
official religion (§ 137). The Concordat was repealed as recently 
as 1905, and both Catholic and Protestant bodies in France now 
depend entirely upon voluntary contributions for support. The 
Russian revolutionists have disestablished the Orthodok Church. 
The new constitution of republican Germany practically dises¬ 
tablishes the Prussian Protestant Church, whose head was the 
kaiser. The constitutions of Czechoslovakia and Poland also 
provide for the separation of Church and State. 


Religious Toleration 


639 


The multiplication of sects, which began with the Reforma¬ 
tion (§ 103), has gone on rapidly in modern times. The Uni¬ 
tarians, who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, New Protes- 
gained followers in Poland and Hungary as early tant sects 
as the sixteenth century and afterward in the British Isles and 
the United States. Seventeenth-century England produced 
the Baptists, whose name was derived from their insistence on 
immersion of adults as the only proper form of baptism. The 
Society of Friends, or Quakers, as they are commonly called, also 
arose in England at this time. 

Methodism took its start in the 
eighteenth century out of the 
preaching of John Wesley and 
his associates. They worked 
among the common people of 
England and won a large follow¬ 
ing by the fervor, piety, and 
strictness of their ways. The 
Methodists finally separated from 
the Anglican Church and became 
an independent denomination. 

Other sects, including the Adven¬ 
tists, Universalists, and Disciples 
of Christ, and even new religions, 
such as Mormonism, Spiritual¬ 
ism, and Christian Science, have 
originated in the United States 
and spread thence to European 

Considerably over a third of the earth’s peoples are Chris¬ 
tians. The adherents of Roman Catholicism number perhaps 
275,000,000; those of the Protestant denomina- The world 
tions, perhaps 175,000,000; and those of the r ell g 10ns 
Greek Church, perhaps 125,000,000. The Jews are estimated at 
10,000,000. For the other world religions the following figures 
must be considered merely rough approximations: Moslems, 
225,000,000; Brahmanists (in India), 225,000,000; Buddhists 
(China, Japan, Tibet, Mongolia, Indo-China), 450,000,000. 



John Wesley 

After a painting by George Romney in the 
possession of W. R. Cassels, London. 



640 

























































































































































































































































































































































































































































































Social Well-being 

179. Social Well-being 


641 


Social betterment in past ages has been undertaken by reli¬ 
gious bodies, by guilds, trade unions, and similar associations, by 
governments, by private corporations, and by proph- 

& l A \ . Y Social reform 

ets, philosophers, and preachers, working alone or 
with only small groups of their followers. There has usually 
been little cooperation among social workers. Our own age, 
however, is notable for the creation of numberless organizations, 
some local, some national, and some international in character, 
and all having as their object the improvement of human rela¬ 
tions. 

Efforts for social betterment rest on the belief that society can 
be improved through conscious and intelligent action by its 
members. Perhaps the chief value of historical social 
study is the proof it offers of social progress. No P ro s ress 
one can read history, especially the history of Western civiliza¬ 
tion during recent centuries, without being impressed by the 
real and great gains which man has made in securing greater 
liberty, greater equality, and greater fraternity. Some of these 
gains have been considered in the present chapter. They are 
all summed up in the word “democracy.” 

Democracy is more than a matter of politics. It is not enough 
to extend to all men (and women too) the privilege of voting, 
holding office, and determining the policies of their social 
governments. There cannot be complete liberty as democracy 
long as many people are still sunk in ignorance, bound to uninter¬ 
rupted toil, and haunted by the constant fear of unemployment 
and pauperism. There cannot be complete equality when sharp 
distinctions exist between rich and poor, between those who have 
property and those who have not. Nor can there be complete 
fraternity, or human brotherhood, in a world where class is 
arrayed against class and nation against nation. In short, de¬ 
mocracy must be socialized if it is to be real democracy. This 
implies a certain spirit on the part of human beings toward one 
another — the spirit of “fair play.” The true democrat does 
not proclaim that all men are equal, but he does assert that all 


642 


Social Betterment 


should have, as far as possible, equal opportunities and privileges. 
He seeks to break down the old, artificial distinctions separating 
human beings, so that brains and character rather than birth and 
wealth may count in the struggle of life. Such desirable ends, 
he knows, are secured by voluntary agreement rather than by 
legislation. The latter may help, — for instance, government 
regulation of industry (§ 131),—Tut the great thing is the de¬ 
velopment through education and moral training of man’s sense of 
responsibility to his fellows. As long as human nature continues 
to be imperfect, each age will have its own problems to solve, 
discontents to satisfy, and evils to overcome. The reformer’s 
task is never-ending, but every genuine reform brings humanity 
nearer to the goal of social well-being. 

Studies 

1. What is the “social conscience”? 2. What humanitarian reforms 
are associated with the names of Wilberforce, Beccaria, Romilly, Howard, 
Mrs. Fry, Miss Willard, William Booth, and Henri Dunant ? 3. Contrast 

the old penal code with modern treatment of criminals. 4. Mention some 
arguments that are often urged against capital punishment. 5. Compare 
as to purposes and results charitable work in the Middle Ages with the 
organized charity of to-day. 6. Look up in an encyclopedia accounts of 
the benefactions of Carnegie and Rockefeller. 7. Why have Christian mis¬ 
sionaries been called the “advance-guard of modern civilization” among 
heathen peoples? 8. What is meant by the “emancipation” of women 
and children during the past century? 9. How do you explain the long 
delay in securing woman suffrage in the United States ? 10. Why is popu¬ 

lar education, so essential in a democratic country? n. Prepare an oral 
report on the history of the kindergarten movement. 12. Name and 
locate ten great universities in the United States and Europe. 13. Give 
some account of the Edict of Nantes and the Toleration Act. 14. Show 
that religious toleration and an established church may exist side by side. 
15. What was the origin of the names Quaker and Methodist? 16. Look 

up in an encyclopedia accounts of the rise of Mormonism and Christian 
Science. 17. What can you find out about the history of Masonry and 
Oddfellowship ? 18. Distinguish between political democracy and social 

democracy. Which is the broader term? 


CHAPTER XX 


MODERN THOUGHT AND CULTURE 
180. Rise of Modern Science 

The Middle Ages were not by any means ignorant of science 
(§91), but its study naturally received a great impetus when the 
Renaissance brought before educated men all that The scientific 
the Greeks had done in mathematics, astronomy, revival 
physics, medicine, and other subjects (§ 61). The invention of 
printing also fostered the scien¬ 
tific revival by making it easy 
to spread knowledge abroad 
in every land. The pioneers 
of Renaissance science were 
Italians, but students in France, 

England, Germany, and other 
countries soon took up the 
work of enlightenment. 

The first place among them 
must be given to Copernicus, 
the founder of Copernicus, 
modern astron- 1473-1543 
omy. He was a Pole, but he 
lived many years in Italy. 

Patient study and calculation 
led him to the conclusion that 
the earth turns upon its own axis, and, together with the other 
planets, revolves around the sun. The Copernican theory met 
much opposition, not only in the universities, which clung to 
the time-honored Ptolemaic system, but also among theologians, 
who thought that it contradicted statements in the Bible. 

643 



Nicholas Copernicus 













644 


Modern Thought and Culture 


Moreover, people could not easily reconcile themselves to the 
idea that the earth, instead of being the center of the universe, 
is only one member of the solar system, that it is, in fact, only 
one of many worlds. 

An Italian scientist, Galileo, made one of the first telescopes 
— it was about as powerful as an opera glass — and turned it on 

Galileo, the heavenly bodies 

1564-1642 with wonderful re¬ 
sults. He found the sun moving 
unmistakably on its axis, Venus 
showing phases according to her 
position in relation to the sun, 
Jupiter accompanied by revolving 
moons, or satellites, and the 
Milky Way composed of a multi¬ 
tude of separate stars. Galileo 
rightly believed that these dis¬ 
coveries confirmed the theory 
of Copernicus. 

Another man of genius, the 
German Kepler, worked out the 
, mathematical laws 

Kepler, 1571- . . _ 

1630, and which govern the 

Newton, movements of the 

1642 1727 planets. He made 

it clear that the planets revolve 
around the sun in elliptical in¬ 
stead of circular orbits. Sir 
Isaac Newton, continuing Kep¬ 
ler’s work, showed by mathemat¬ 
ical calculation that the motion of the planets about the sun, 
and of the moon about the earth, can be explained as due to 
the same force of gravity which makes the apple fall to the 
ground. This discovery that all the movements of the heav¬ 
enly bodies obey one simple physical law is a landmark in the 
history of science. 

Two other scientists gained fame in a field far removed from 



Galileo’s Telescopes 

Preserved in the Museum of Ancient 
Instruments, Florence. A [broken object- 
glass, with which Jupiter’s satellites were 
discovered, is mounted in the center of the 
ivory frame. 


Rise of Modern Science 645 

astronomy. Vesalius, a Fleming, who studied in Italian medical 

schools, gave to the world the first careful descrip- ^ 

tion of the human body based on actual dissection. 1514-1564, 

He was thus the founder of human anatomy. and Harve y> 

J 1578-1657 

Harvey, an Englishman, after observing living 
animals, announced the discovery of the circulation of the blood. 
He thereby founded human physiology. 

Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Vesalius, 

Harvey, and their fellow workers built up the 
scientific method. Students in the The scientific 
Middle Ages had mostly been sat- method 
isfied to accept what Aristotle and other phi¬ 
losophers had said, without trying to prove 
their statements. Kepler, for instance, was the 
first to disprove the Aristotelian idea that, as all 
perfect motion is circular, therefore the heav¬ 
enly bodies must move in circular orbits. Sim¬ 
ilarly, the world had to wait many centuries 
before Harvey showed Aristotle’s error in sup¬ 
posing that the blood arose in the liver, went 
thence to the heart, and by the veins was con- p EATH Mask 
ducted over the body. The new scientific of Sir Isaac 
method rested on observation and experiment. Newton 
Students learned at length to take nothing for In the possession 

, . . .. , of the Royal Society 

granted, to set aside all authority, and go ofLond on. 
straight to nature for their facts. 

Scientific investigations, in previous times pursued by lonely 
thinkers, now began to be carried on systematically by the 
members of learned societies. Italy led the way Learned 
with the foundation at Naples and Rome of the societies 
first academies of science, and her example was followed at 
Paris, Berlin, and other European capitals. Shortly after the 
“ Glorious Revolution” a group of English investigators obtained 
a charter forming them into the Royal Society of London. It 
still exists and enrolls the most distinguished scientists of Great 
Britain. Never before had there been so much interest in science 
and so many opportunities to uncover the secrets of nature. 



646 


Modern Thought and Culture 

181. Development of Modern Science 


Astronomy 


Arithmetic, geometry, and algebra (elementary mathematics) 

had been studied in the schools and universities of the Middle 

Ages. It remained to create the higher mathe- 
Mathematics & . . , , . , 

matics, including analytic geometry, logarithms, 

and the infinitesimal calculus. Knowledge of the calculus, 

which deals with numbers infinitely small, is of immense service 

in scientific research, as well as in engineering and other 

practical applications of science. 

Many pages would be needed merely to enumerate the great 
discoveries of modern scientists. Eighteenth-century astron¬ 
omers found beyond Saturn a new planet, Uranus ; 
computed the distance between the earth and the 
moon; and showed that our solar system as a whole is moving 
toward a point in the constellation Hercules. Nineteenth-cen¬ 
tury astronomers found still another planet, Neptune; measured 
the distances of some of the fixed stars; and began the task of 
photographing the heavens. Twentieth-century astronomers 
have learned much about the temperature of the stars as indi¬ 
cated by their different colors, red, orange, yellow, and bluish- 
white ; about the sizes of the stars, ranging in bulk from “ giants ” 
many times larger than our sun to “dwarfs” much smaller than 
our sun; about the incredible number of the stars, which are 
now reckoned by billions; and about their equally incredible 
distances. The stellar universe to which the sun belongs is 
considered to have a flattened, watch-shaped figure, with a 
diameter some five or six times as great as its thickness. Out¬ 
side this system of suns lie other systems whose immensity is 
being revealed by high-powered telescopes and the photographic 
lens. 

The foundations of modern physics, particularly in the depart¬ 
ments of electricity and magnetism, were laid in the eighteenth 
century. Benjamin Franklin, whose scientific 
work gained for him election to the Royal Society, 
proved that lightning is really an electrical discharge. The 
memory of the Italian Volta (1745-1827) is perpetuated when- 


Physics 


Rise of Modern Science 


647 


ever an electrician refers to a “voltaic cell” or uses the term 
“volt” More recent physicists determined the speed of light 1 
and showed that light, heat, and electricity are all forms of wave 
action in the ether, but of different wave lengths, these ranging 
from a few miles or longer to minute fractions of an inch. 

The telegraph, telephone, electric lighting, and electric 
motive force were some of the practical applications of physical 
science in the nineteenth century. Wireless teleg- Applied 
raphy and telephony have now developed from the P h y sics 
discovery of the “Hertzian waves,” or electric vibrations in the 
ether. In 1895 the German Rontgen discovered the X-rays, 
and three years later the French professor Curie and his Polish 
wife obtained from the mineral pitchblende the mysterious 
element radium. Physicists have now found other radioactive 
bodies and have proved that radioactivity is due to the break¬ 
ing-up of atoms, which, instead of being indivisible, as once 
thought, are themselves composed of particles of electricity. 
An atom consists of a nucleus, with a positive electric charge, 
and a number of electrons, negatively charged, which revolve 
with tremendous speed around the nucleus. This amounts to 
saying that matter is electricity and that electricity is matter. 

Chemical research made rapid progress in the eighteenth 
century. Greek philosophers had taught that earth, air, fire, 
and water compose the original “elements” out of 
which everything else was made (§ 60). Chemists 
now disproved this idea by decomposing water into the two 
gases, hydrogen and oxygen. The Frenchman Lavoisier (1743- 
1794) also showed that fire is really a union of oxygen with earthy 
carbon. Previously it had been supposed that objects burn 
because they contain a combustible substance known as “phlo¬ 
giston.” More modern chemists have shown that all matter 
exists in a solid, a liquid, or gaseous state according to the degree 
of heat to which it is subjected; that it is composed of one or more 
of ninety-odd elements; and that these elements combine with 
one another in fixed proportions, as when one part of hydrogen 

1 About 186,300 miles a second. A “ light year,” or the distance which light 
covers in that time, is about six trillion miles. 


Chemistry 


648 


Modern Thought and Culture 


by weight unites with eight parts of oxygen by weight to form 
nine parts of water. 

Applied chemistry has given us illuminating gas, friction 
matches, powerful explosives such as dynamite and nitroglycer- 
Applied ine, artificial fertilizers, beet sugar, aluminum, 

chemistry and various derivatives of coal tar, including the 
aniline dyes, carbolic acid, naphtha, and saccharine. The 
chemist now creates in his laboratory many substances which 

have never existed before or 
else had been produced only 
by plants or in the bodies of 
animals. 

New conceptions of the 
earth were set forth by the 
Scotchman, 
Geology J ame s Hutton 

(1726-1797), who ranks as 
the creator of modern geol¬ 
ogy. He studied minerals 
and rocks in order to under¬ 
stand the development of 
the earth in past times. His 
work was continued by the 
Englishman, Sir Charles 
Lyell (1797-1875), who ex¬ 
plained the changes which 
have produced mountains, valleys, plains, lakes, seacoasts, and 
other geologic features, not as due to sudden violent movements 
(“cataclysms”), such as had been earlier supposed to cause 
them, but as the result of the contraction of the globe, erosion by 
water, glaciers, frost, wind, and other forces working gradually 
over immense periods of time. The acceptance of this explana¬ 
tion, coupled with the discovery of fossils in the stratified rocks, 
made it necessary to estimate the age of the earth by untold 
millions, instead of a few thousands, of years (§2). 

Eighteenth-century explorers brought back to Europe from 
America and the Pacific many new kinds of animals and plants, 



Sir Charles Lyell 

After a painting by T. H. Maguire. 


Rise of Modern Science 


649 


thus greatly encouraging biological study. The careful classifi¬ 
cation of plants by the Swede, Linnaeus (1707-1778), established 
botany as a science. The modern science of zool¬ 
ogy rests on the discovery that all animals (as well BloIogy 
as plants) are composed of cells containing the transparent jelly, 
or protoplasm, which is the basis of life. The evolutionary 
theory associated with the name of Charles Darwin (1809-1882) 
is an attempt to show how the innumerable species of plants 
and animals have come to be what they are by a long process of 
development from earlier lower and simpler forms. Investiga¬ 
tors since Darwin are making numerous additions to the evolu¬ 
tionary theory, but we still have much to learn about the origin 
and progress of life on the earth. 

The practical applications of biology are seen in the germ 
theory of disease. The researches of the Frenchman, Louis 
Pasteur, upon vegetable microorganisms (bacteria) M ^ . 
proved that the harmful kinds are responsible for 
definite diseases in both plants and animals. Dr. Robert Koch 
of Berlin soon isolated the germs which produce tuberculosis and 
cholera, and during recent years those producing diphtheria, 
typhoid fever, influenza, pneumonia, lockjaw, bubonic plague, 
and other dread scourges have been identified. In some cases 
remedies called antitoxins are now administered to counteract 
the bacterial toxins or poisons. Another step in medicine is the 
discovery that certain diseases are spread in some one particular 
way. The bite of one species of mosquito causes malaria and 
that of another yellow fever; lice transmit typhus; the tsetse-fly 
carries the sleeping sickness; and fleas on rats convey the bubonic 
plague to man. All this new knowledge enables us to look for¬ 
ward with confidence to a time when contagious and infectious 
diseases will be eliminated from civilized countries. The span 
of human life is rapidly lengthening, with the advance of medical 
science, so that the average man to-day can expect to live many 
years longer than his forefathers. 

Meanwhile, surgery has been revolutionized by the use of 
anaesthetics, such as nitrous oxide (laughing gas), ether, and 
chloroform. Their use in England and the United States goes 


650 


Modern Thought and Culture 



The Hooker Telescope 


This 100 -inch reflecting telescope of the Mount Wilson Observatory, California, formed 
the gift of the late John D. Hooker, of Los Angeles, to the Carnegie Institution. The instru¬ 
ment is particularly adapted for photographic work. Its great light gathering power makes 
possible the observation of millions of stars previously unknown, as well as much closer study 
of the moon and the planets. 


back to the ’forties of the last century. Some years later the 
Englishman, Joseph Lister, discovered that carbolic acid is a 
Surgery powerful germicide, which, applied to wounds, would 
prevent them from festering. The result of his 
discovery was the general adoption of antisepsis in surgical 
operations. Doctors now pay a great deal of attention to asepsis 
as well, that is, to methods of keeping their instruments and 
dressings free from germs or other harmful organisms. 





Philosophy and the Social Studies 


651 

The advance of both pure and applied science has been largely 
due to the improvement of apparatus. The giant telescope 
enables the astronomer to measure the movements scientific 
of stars so remote that their light rays, which we apparatus 
now see, started earthwards thousands, tens of thousands, even 
hundred? of thousands of years ago. The spectroscope analyzes 
the light of the various heavenly bodies and proves that they 
are composed of the same kinds of matter as our sun. The 
compound microscope reveals the existence of a hitherto unsus¬ 
pected realm of minute life in earth and air and water. The 
scientific possibilities of the photographic camera, especially in 
the form of moving pictures, have only recently been realized. 
Science now depends on the use of precise instruments of research 
as much as industry depends on machinery. 

A hundred years ago, science enjoyed only a limited recogni¬ 
tion in universities and none at all in secondary and elementary 
schools. The marvelous achievements of scientific Science in 
men fixed public attention on their work, and modern llfe 
courses in science began to take a place beside the older 
“classical” studies. At the same time science has become an 
international force which recognizes no national boundaries, no 
distinctions of race or religion. Scientists in every land follow 
one another’s researches; they carry on their labor in common. 

182. Philosophy and the Social Studies 

Man in modern times has become more and more interested in 
himself; he has resolved to learn all that is possible concerning 
what he is, whence he came, and what he shall be. philosophy 
These are the old questions of philosophy, debated 
since the time of the Greeks (§60). Perhaps no other philo¬ 
sophic thinker has more influenced his age than Immanuel 
Kant (1724-1804). During a long and quiet life of lecturing 
and writing at the Prussian university of Konigsberg, Kant 
produced works in almost every field of philosophy, as well 
as in theology and natural science. He found the real basis 
of faith in God, free-will, and immortality in man’s moral 


652 


Modern Thought and Culture 


nature. A later and also very influential philosopher was the 
Englishman, Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). The ten volumes 
of his Synthetic Philosophy form an ambitious attempt to explain 
the development of the universe as a whole, from the atom to the 
star, from the simplest one-celled creatures to man. Spencer 
was a pioneer in the modern study of psychology, that branch of 
philosophy dealing with the mental life of both man and the 
lower animals. 

Economic science, which investigates among other things the 
production of wealth and its distribution as rent, interest, profits, 

and wages, had been first studied by those whose 
Economics .... . . . . . 

chief motive was to increase the riches of mer¬ 
chants and fill the treasuries of kings. Such were the seven¬ 
teenth-century mercantilists (§ 114). They were followed in 
France during the eighteenth century by the physiocrats, who 
received this name (from two Greek words meaning “nature” 
and “to rule”) because they believed that natural laws ruled in 
the economic world. Accordingly, they protested against the 
burdensome restraints imposed upon industry by the guilds and 
upon commerce by the governments, advocating, instead, eco¬ 
nomic freedom. They believed that any one should be allowed 
to make what things he likes; that all occupations should be 
open to everybody; that trade between different parts of the 
country should not be impeded by tolls and taxes; and that 
customs duties should not be levied on foreign goods. Their 
teaching was summed up in the famous phrase laissez-faire — 
“let alone” (§ 131). 

A Scotch professor of philosophy, Adam Smith, who had 

visited France and knew the physiocrats, carried their ideas 

. . _ . „ across the Channel. His famous work on the 

Adam Smith . 

Wealth of Nations appeared m 1776, the year of 

American independence. It formed a new declaration of inde¬ 
pendence for industry and commerce. Smith believed that 
every man should be “perfectly free to pursue his own interest 
in his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into 
competition with those of any other man or order of men.” 
Smith set forth the doctrine of laissez-faire so clearly and per- 


Philosophy and the Social Studies 653 


suasively as to make a profound impression upon business men 
and statesmen. His arguments against monopolies, bounties, 
and protective tariffs helped to bring about the adoption of free 
trade by Great Britain and even affected Continental legisla¬ 
tion. Thus the Wealth of Nations , judged by its results, must 
be accounted one of the most important books ever written. 

The name “sociology” for the general study of human society 

was introduced in the nineteenth century by the French philoso- 

pher, Auguste 
n . Sociology 

Comte. It was 

popularized by Herbert Spen¬ 
cer and later writers. Sociol¬ 
ogists try to show how lan¬ 
guages, laws, moral codes, re¬ 
ligions, and customs arise and 
develop by group action and 
how the individual is affected at 
all points by the group or groups 
to which he belongs. Sociology 
thus reinforces the teaching of 
St. Paul: “For none of us 
liveth to himself, and none 
dieth to himself.” 1 

The study of history has 
been much influenced by the economists and sociologists. It 
is no longer confined to a narrative in chronological order of po¬ 
litical events. It now has less to say about rulers History and 
and dynasties, constitutions and governments, prehistory 
wars and peace treaties, and more to say about other aspects of 
civilization. It tries to give some idea of economic and social 
development through the ages. It selects out of the innumera¬ 
ble facts preserved in written records those which will help us 
to understand the life of to-day and fit us for the life of to-mor¬ 
row. History thus becomes a survey of human progress. So 
considered, it links up closely with prehistory, about which 
we studied in the first chapter of this book. 

1 Romans, xiv, 7. 



Adam Smith 

A medallion by James Tassie. 


654 


Modern Thought and Culture 


183. Literature 


in modern 
literature 


The renewed interest in classical studies which marked the 
Renaissance (§ 96) for a time retarded the growth of modern 
Growth of literature. Scholars devoted themselves to the 
modern “classics” and looked down with some contempt 

upon books written in the vernacular languages. 
The common people did not understand Greek and Latin, yet 
they were now beginning to read and they had the printing press 
to supply them with books. It was not long, therefore, before 
many works composed in Italian, Spanish, French, English, and 
other languages made an appearance. Henceforth literature 
could be more creative and original than was possible when 
authors merely imitated or translated those of antiquity. 

Modern writers reveal themselves in their works. This per¬ 
sonal note offers a sharp contrast to the anonymous character of 
Personality much medieval writing. We do not know the 
authors of the Song of Roland or the Nibelungenlied 
(§94), any more than we know the builders of the 
Gothic cathedrals. Medieval literature subordinated the indi¬ 
vidual ; that of modern times expresses the sense of individuality 
and man’s interest in himself. 

Every century since the Renaissance has had its eminent men 
of letters, and almost every department of literature has been 
cultivated by them. The epic is represented by 
the Lusiads of the Portuguese Camoens and the 
Jerusalem Delivered of the Italian Tasso. Both wrote during the 
sixteenth century. The one found inspiration in the story of Da 
Gama’s memorable voyage to India; the other chose as his 
subject the capture of Jerusalem by Christian knights in the 
First Crusade. Edmund Spenser composed the Faery Queen 
in the time of Elizabeth. It is the nearest approach in English 
literature to what may be called the romantic epic. John 
Milton wrote Paradise Lost during the reign of Charles II. 
The work has given the author a place beside Homer, Vergil, 
and Dante among the great epic poets of the world. 

The miracle and morality plays of the Middle Ages (§ 93) 


The epic 


Literature 


655 


showed the popular interest in the drama, but it remained for 
modern playwrights to compose tragedies and comedies compara¬ 
ble in literary interest and value to those of the 
Greeks (§ 58). The plays of Shakespeare, though The drama 
written more than three centuries ago, are still produced on the 

Shakespeare’s Signature 

There are only six known examples of Shakespeare’s signature of undisputed authenticity. 


stage, and our appreciation of them grows, rather than lessens, 
with the lapse of time. The most eminent French dramatists 


Corneille and Racine the tra¬ 
gedians, and Moliere the com¬ 
edian, flourished during the 
reign of Louis XIV. Still 
later the plays of Lessing, 
Schiller, and Goethe gave last¬ 
ing glory to German litera¬ 
ture. 

Lyric poetry has been com¬ 
posed in all countries, notably 
in Great Britain, , . 

’ The lyric 

France, Germany 
Italy, and the United States. 
It is now the favorite style 
of poetic expression, displacing 
both epic and dramatic verse 
in popular esteem. 

Romances and novels have 




Moliere 


been produced in great num- A bust by ; A Houd<m (he Thatre 

ber. Don Quixote. . Franfaise, Paris. 

. Fiction 

the masterpiece of 

the Spaniard Cervantes, was written in the sixteenth century, 
but it is even more read to-day than it was three hundred years 










6 5 6 


Modern Thought and Culture 


ago. Pilgrim'’s Progress by John Bunyan and Robinson Crusoe 
by Daniel Defoe are old books, but they are perennial in 
their appeal to both children and adults. Sir Walter Scott in 
the early nineteenth century did much to give the novel popu¬ 
larity through his historical tales. Dickens, Thackeray, and 
other English novelists made it a picture of contemporary life. 
On the Continent some of the most celebrated authors of the 
past century have been novelists. It is sufficient to mention 
four only, whose fame has gone out into many lands: the 
Frenchman Victor Hugo; the Italian Manzoni; the Russian 
Tolstoy, and the Pole Sienkiewicz. 

Common schools, free libraries, and cheap printing have multi¬ 
plied readers. The pleasures of reading, once confined to the 
Modern liter- cultured few, thus become available for the many, 
ature and This democratization of literature offers wonderful 
democracy opportunities for self-improvement and self-cultiva¬ 
tion. Many persons, unfortunately, confine themselves to 

newspapers, trashy magazines, and 
the “latest” novels, which are not 
necessarily the best novels, neglect¬ 
ing the “books of all time” in 
which great thinkers and writers 
have expressed the aspirations of 
humanity. We may hope and 
perhaps believe that the improve¬ 
ment of public education will 
gradually raise the standards of 
public taste in reading. 


184. Music and the Fine Arts 

Music now takes almost as large 
a place as literature in modern 
Music in life. Even more than 
modern life literature, it ranks as 
an international force, for the musi¬ 
cian, whatever his nationality, 



A Fifteenth-Century Organ 























































Music and the Fine Arts 


657 

uses a language which needs no translation to be intelli¬ 
gible to all. 

During medieval times formal music was chiefly employed in 
religious services. The Renaissance began to secularize it, so 
that it might express all human joy, sadness, pas- sacred and 
sion, and aspiration. The secular art thus includes secular music 
operas, chamber music (for reproduction in a small apartment 
instead of in a theater or concert hall), com¬ 
positions for soloists, and orchestral sym¬ 
phonies. 

The Middle Ages knew the pipe-organ, 
harp, flute, drum, trumpet, and many 
other instruments. These were The 
often played together, but with orchestra 
no other purpose than to increase the vol¬ 
ume of sound. There was not the slight¬ 
est idea of orchestration. After the Renais¬ 
sance new instruments began to appear, 
including the violin, viols of all sizes, the 
slide trombone, and the clarinet. Per¬ 
cussion action, applied to the old-fashioned 
spinet and harpsichord, produced in the 
eighteenth century the pianoforte. The 
symphony, a tone poem combining all musi¬ 
cal sounds into a harmonious whole, now 
began to assume its present form. The 
great symphonists — Haydn, Mozart, that 
supreme genius Beethoven (1770-1827), 
and their successors — thus created a 
new art to enrich the higher life of mankind. 

Another master of music, Richard Wagner (1813-1883), 
created the musical drama, which unites music, poetry, and 
acting. Wagner believed that the singer should The musical 
also be an actor and should adapt both song and drama 
gesture to the orchestra. He also gave much attention to the 
scenery and stagesetting in order to heighten the dramatic 
effect. Wagner’s most famous work, The Ring of the Nibelung } 



Queen Elizabeth’s 
Cithern 


6 S 8 


Modern Thought and Culture 


Folk songs 


consists of four complete dramas based on old Teutonic legends 
(§ 94)- 

A new source of music has been opened up in the melo¬ 
dies of the European peasantry — their folk songs. Almost 
every country in Europe is rich in these musical 
wild flowers, and they are now being gathered by 
trained students. Lullabies, marriage ditties, funeral dirges, 
and ballads are some of the varieties of folk songs. 

Like music, sculpture 
illustrates the internation¬ 
alism of art. 

Sculpture 

The three 
greatest sculptors of recent 
times were Canova, an 
Italian, Thorwaldsen, a 
Dane, and Rodin, a French¬ 
man. The first two found 
inspiration mainly in classic 
statuary, which seeks ideal 
beauty of form; the third 
expressed in marble the ut¬ 
most realism and natural¬ 
ism. Much fine work has 
also been done in bronze; for instance, the Chicago statue of 
Abraham Lincoln by St. Gaudens, who is rightly considered 
the most eminent sculptor produced by America. 

Modern architects have usually gone to the buildings of 
ancient Greece and Rome for models or else have imitated the 
Romanesque and Gothic styles (§ 89). The exten¬ 
sive use of structural steel has now begun to produce 
an entirely new architectural style, more appropriate to modern 
needs, in the “skyscraper” of American cities. It is sometimes 
criticized as being “not architecture, but engineering with a 
stone veneer.” The criticism seems hardly just in all cases. 
Such a structure as the Woolworth building in New York or the 
Tribune building in Chicago has beauty of its own and truly 
expresses the spirit of our industrial age. 



Mozart’s Spinet 
S tadt Museum, Vienna 

The spinet had only one string to a note, plucked 
by means of a quill or a plectrum of leather. 


Architecture 





120 150 ° 180 ' 














































































































Cosmopolitanism 


659 


Modern painters, no longer restricted to religious pictures, 
often choose their subjects from history or contemporary life. 
They excel in portraiture, and their landscape 

. . .11 , , . , Painting 

paintings unquestionably surpass the best which 
even the “old masters” of the Renaissance could produce. 
Painting flourishes especially in France, where the leading 
artists receive their training and exhibit their pictures at an 
annual exposition, the Salon at Paris. The increasing number 
of art schools, municipal art galleries, and local exhibitions open 
to the public spreads the enjoyment of painting and sculpture 
among the masses, instead of limiting it to the cultured few. 
The fine arts thus tend to be democratized, even as literature 
and the drama. 


185. Cosmopolitanism 

Everywhere people build the same houses, use the same 
furniture, and eat the same food. Everywhere they enjoy the 
same amusements Uniformity 

and distractions: of modern 
( ( • civilization 

concerts, moving 
pictures,” the theater, clubs, 
magazines, automobiles. They 
also dress alike. Powder, gold 
lace, wigs, pigtails, three-cornered 
hats, knee breeches, silk stock¬ 
ings, and silver-buckled shoes 
passed away in revolutionary 
France with the other follies of the 
Old Regime, and the loose coat 
and long trousers of the working 
classes became the accepted style 
for men’s apparel, not only in 

France, but in all civilized countries. Women’s apparel still 
changes year by year, but the new fashions, starting from 
Paris, London, or New York, are speedily copied in San 
Francisco, Melbourne, and Tokio. 

The inconveniences resulting from the diversity of languages 



Men’s Fashions, 1828-1829 



66 o 


Modern Thought and Culture 


were never greater than to-day, when travel is a general habit 
and when nations read one another’s books and profit by one 
Universal another’s discoveries and inventions. Latin was 
languages the speech of learned men in Europe throughout the 
Middle Ages, and French has been the speech of polite society 
and diplomacy for more than two centuries. What is needed, 
however, is a universal language which can be readily mastered 
by any one. Many attempts to produce such a language have 



Crinolines, 1864 


been made, the most successful being Esperanto, the creation 
in 1887 of a Polish scholar. Books and magazines are now 
printed in Esperanto; commercial schools in Europe teach it; 
and it is broadcast from various European stations. Inter¬ 
national congresses of Esperantists are also held to further the 
world-wide use of this artificial idiom. 

Meanwhile, the spread of English-speaking peoples through¬ 
out the globe seems destined to make English, in some sort, 
The English a universal language. It is now used by 175 mil- 
language lion p e0 pi ej either as their mother tongue or as an 

acquired language. 1 Those using Russian are estimated at 100 

1 United Kingdom, 45,000,000; Canada and Australia, 12,000,000; British 
Africa, 5,000,000; British India and other possessions, 3,000,000; the United States, 
110,000,000. 




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Cosmopolitanism 


661 

millions, German, 80 millions, Spanish, 50 millions, and French, 
40 millions. The absence of inflections and simple sentence- 
order of English commend it to foreign students. In spite of 
an often arbitrary spelling and pronunciation, it is more easily 
learned than any other of the great languages of the world. 

The idea of a universal exposition, to which all countries 
should send the products of their industry and commerce, first 
took shape in the Crystal Palace Exhibition (Lon- universal 
don, 1851). Since then European expositions have expositions 
been numerous, each one larger than its predecessor. The 
Universal Exhibition (Paris, 1900) attracted 51,000,000 visitors. 
The United States began with the Philadelphia Centennial of 
1876. This was followed by the World’s Fair at Chicago in 
1893 an( l by the more recent expositions at St. Louis, San 
Francisco, and several other cities. 

A universal system of weights and measures is provided by the 
metric system. This goes back to revolutionary times in France, 
when the French established the meter, or one ten- The metric 
millionth of the distance from the pole to the equa- s y stem 
tor, as a unit of distance. A unit of volume was taken in the 
liter (a cube of one-tenth meter side), and a unit of weight in 
the gram (one-thousandth of the weight of a liter of water at 4 0 
centigrade). There are thus only three units in the metric sys¬ 
tem. Its convenience and accuracy have led to its adoption 
by every civilized country except Great Britain, the British 
colonies, and the United States. 

Our solar calendar, which comes down to us from the Romans, 
who in turn got it from the Egyptians (§ n), is by no means 
scientifically perfect. The French revolutionists The “ fixed ” 
tried to improve it by dividing the year into twelve calendar 
months of thirty days, each, with five extra days at the end of 
the year, and six days in leap years. They also adopted the 
ten-day week of ancient Egypt, instead of the week of seven days. 
Napoleon Bonaparte, however, restored the old calendar in 
France. Since then various proposals have been made for its 
reform, particularly by the adoption of thirteen months of 
twenty-eight days each. There would be four seven-day weeks 


662 


Modern Thought and Culture 


in each month, and every day in the week would come at a 
regular time in the month. Not only weeks and months, but 
also quarters and half-year periods would always be equal and 
comparable for statistical purposes. This simple and practical 
“fixed calendar” has now been accepted by the League of 
Nations, and an international conference will be called to secure 
its adoption by civilized countries. 

The linking up of the nations by steam and electricity has 
led to many agreements between them on matters of common 
International interest. Postage, telegraphs, copyrights, patents, 
agreements weights and measures, customs tariffs, money 
systems, and agriculture are some of these matters. In order to 
carry out the agreements various organizations have been 
founded, such as the Universal Postal Union at Bern (§ 127) 
and the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (for 
the metric system) at Paris. The League of Nations now 
provides still another means for this sort of cooperation (§171). 

There are also many international conferences of scientists, 
men of letters, social reformers, and the like. Two thousand 
International such gatherings took place in the half century pre¬ 
conferences ceding the World War. Some of them resulted 
in the formation of permanent bodies such as the Pan-American 
Union (§ 163) and the Red Cross Society (§ 175).' They make 
for friendship and goodwill among the world’s peoples. Directly 
or indirectly they contribute to the promotion of what has been 
well called the “international mind.” 

The earliest civilized communities grew up in isolation and 
long continued to be isolated. Their unification in times past 
Unity of has often been brought about forcibly by war and 
mankind conquest, but now it tends to be a peaceful process. 
Railroads, steamships, and airplanes bind the nations together, 
and the telegraph, the submarine cable, and the “wireless” 
keep them in constant communication. The oceans, no longer 
barriers, serve as highways uniting West and East, Occident and 
Orient. Ideas and ideals tour the globe. We are becoming 
what the Old Greeks called “cosmopolitans,” or citizens of the 
world (cosmos). This cosmopolitan movement must go on still 


PANORAMA OF PARIS 

A view which shows the Seine flowing through the city and spanned by handsome bridges. Rising from the river are two islands now covered with 
buildings, including Notre Dame Cathedral. In the foreground and on the north bank of the Seine are the Jardin des Tuileries, once the site of a royal 
palace, and beyond this park the enormous group of buildings constituting the Louvre. 

















THE EIFFEL TOWER 

Erected for the Paris Exposition of 1889 and named in honor of the engineer under 
whose direction it was constructed. The iron lattice work, of which it is mainly com¬ 
posed, reaches a height of 984 feet (exactly 300 meters). The tower is thus the world’s 
highest building. 











Cosmopolitanism 


663 


more rapidly in the future, broadening our outlook, widening 
our sympathies, and bringing ever nearer the end to which all 
history points — the unity of mankind. 

Studies 

1. How do the facts presented in this chapter support the statement, 
“Great thinkers control the affairs of men, and by their discoveries regulate 
the march of nations” ? 2. Show that the discoveries of Galileo confirmed 

the Copernican theory. 3. Name ten great scientists of modern times 
and give some account of their work. 4. What do you understand by 
“laws of nature”? Mention one of these laws. 5. Explain the germ 
theory of disease. 6. How do you account for the marvelous growth of 
modern science? 7. What are some of the social studies? Why may 
history be included among them? 8. Name six great lyric poets of Great 
Britain during the nineteenth century. Can you name any of France, 
Germany, and Italy during the same period? 9. Mention some famous 
novels by Dickens, Scott, and Thackeray. 10. Have you read any novels 
by Victor Hugo, Tolstoy, or Sienkiewicz? n. Mention some of the great 
composers of the nineteenth century. 12. Who have been some of the 
great painters of modern times in France, England, and other countries? 

13. Compare universal expositions with the fairs of the Middle Ages. 

14. What are some of the advantages of the metric system and the “fixed 
calendar”? 15. “The nations, while remaining politically independent, 
are now economically and socially interdependent.” Explain this statement. 
16. Why may civilization be described as now the “-common adventure of 
all mankind”? 17. “Civilization, which once was fluvial — as on the 
Nile, the Euphrates, the Ganges, the Hoang-ho; then maritime — as on the 
Persian Gulf, the Aegean, the Mediterranean, the Yellow Sea; then oceanic — 
as was possible after Columbus and Magellan; has lately become planetary.” 
Comment on this statement. 


APPENDIX 


TABLE OF EVENTS AND DATES 


B.C. 

c. 3400 Written records begin to be kept by the Egyptians. 

c. 2100 Code of Hammurabi. 

c. 1375-1358 Monotheistic revolution of Amenhotep IV in Egypt. 

c. 1200-1000 Hymns of the Rigveda. The oldest Indo-European litera¬ 
ture. 

776 First recorded celebration of the Olympian games. Greek chronology 
begins to be precise from this date. 

753 (?) Rome founded. Traditional date. 

700 (?) The prophet Zoroaster in Persia. 

586-538 Captivity of the Hebrews in Babylonia. 

560 (?)~477 (?) Gautama Buddha. 

551-478 Confucius. 

509 (?) Roman Republic established. Traditional date. 

490 Marathon, 480 Salamis, and 479 Plataea and Mycale. The four 
battles which preserved Greece from Persian domination and 
European culture from submergence in that of Asia. 

451-449 Laws of the Twelve Tables published. The basis of all later 
Roman law. 

338 Battle of Chaeronea. The triumph of Macedonia over the disunited 
city-states of Greece. 

333 Issus and 331 Arbela. The two battles which overthrew the Persian 
Empire and established Macedonian supremacy throughout the 
Near East. 

326 Invasion of India by Alexander the Great. 

214 Great Wall of China begun. 

202 Battle of Zama. Ended the Second Punic War and left Rome without 
a rival in the western Mediterranean. 

58-50 Conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar. Opened up much of western 
Europe to Graeco-Roman civilization. 

31 Battle of Actium. Ended civil war between Antony and Octavian, 
leaving the latter supreme in the Roman state. 

4 (?) Birth of Christ. 

664 


Table of Events and Dates 665 


A.D. 

70 Jerusalem captured and destroyed by the Romans. 

212 Edict of Caracalla. Extended Roman citizenship to all free-born men 
in the Roman Empire. 

313 “ Edict of Milan.” Granted general religious toleration and placed 

Christianity on a legal equality with the other religions of the 
Roman world. 

325 Council of Nicaea. Framed the Creed of Nicaea, which is still the ac¬ 
cepted summary of Christian doctrine in Roman Catholic, Greek, 
and most Protestant churches. 

330 Constantinople (New Rome) made the capital of the Roman Empire. 

451 Battle of Chalons. Saved western Europe from being conquered by 
the still barbarous Huns. 

476 Deposition of Romulus Augustulus. Extinction of the line of Roman 
emperors in the West. 

496 Clovis adopted Catholic Christianity. Paved the way for intimate 
relations between the Franks and the Papacy. 

529 (?) Rule of St. Benedict. Established the form of monasticism which 
ultimately prevailed everywhere in western Europe. 

5 2 9 - 534 Codification of Roman law. The Corpus Juris Civilis formed per¬ 
haps the most important contribution of Rome to civilization. 

622 The Hegira (Flight) of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina. Marks 
the beginning of the Mohammedan era. 

732 Battle of Tours. The victory of the Franks stemmed the farther 
advance of the Moslems into western Europe. 

800 Charlemagne crowned Emperor of the Romans. Formation of the 
so-called Holy Roman Empire. 

962 Otto I, the Great, crowned Roman Emperor. Revival of the so-called 
Holy Roman Empire. 

988 Christianity introduced into Russia. The Russian Slavs henceforth 
came under the influence of the Greek Church and Byzantine civ¬ 
ilization. 

1054 Final rupture of the Greek and Roman Churches. Destroyed the 
religious unity of European Christendom. 

1066 Battle of Hastings. Resulted in the Norman Conquest of England. 

1095 Beginning of the crusades. 

1206-1227 Conquests of Jenghiz Khan. Brought a large part of Asia 
and eastern Europe under Mongol sway. 

1215 Magna Carta. Defined the rights of Englishmen and inspired their 
later struggles for political liberty. 

1271-1295 Travels of Marco Polo. Polo’s narrative of his travels greatly 
increased the interest of Europeans in the Far East. 

1348-1349 Black Death in Europe. Hastened the decline of serfdom and 
the emancipation of the peasantry. 


666 Appendix 

1396 Greek first taught at Florence, Italy. The revival of Greek studies in 
western Europe formed an important aspect of the Renaissance 
movement. 

1453 Constantinople captured by the Ottoman Turks. End of the Byzan¬ 
tine Empire. 

1456 First large book printed at Gutenberg’s press in Germany. 

1487 Cape of Good Hope rounded by Diaz. The final step in the Portu¬ 
guese exploration of the western coast of Africa. 

1492 Discovery of America by Columbus. 

1498 India reached by Vasco da Gama. The Portuguese thus opened 
up an ocean passage from Europe around Africa to the Far 
East. 

1513 Discovery of the Pacific by Balboa. 

1517 Luther’s Ninety-five Theses posted. Beginning of the Protestant 
Reformation in Germany. 

1519-1522 Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe. 

1543 Publication of the Copernican theory. Resulted in the adoption of 
an entirely new system of astronomy, by which man’s outlook on 
the universe has been fundamentally changed. 

1545 Silver Mines of Potosi in Bolivia discovered. The enormous output 
of silver from these mines greatly enlarged the supply of money 
in western Europe, thus stimulating industrial and commercial 
enterprise. 

1545-1563 Council of Trent. An important agency in the Catholic 
Counter Reformation. 

1598 Edict of Nantes issued by Henry IV of France. A noteworthy step 
in the direction of religious toleration. 

1607 Settlement of Jamestown. The first permanent English colony in 
America. 

1611 Authorized Version of the Bible published. The translation still in 
ordinary use among Protestants throughout the English-speaking 
world. 

1625 Grotius’s “ On the Law of War and Peace ” published. Founded 
the study of international law. 

1642-1649 The Puritan Revolution in England. 

1688-1689 The “ Glorious Revolution.” Completed the work of the 
Puritan Revolution by overthrowing absolutism and divine right in 
England. 

1713 Peace of Utrecht. Ended the War of the Spanish Succession. 

1762 Rousseau’s “ Social Contract ” published. Its democratic teachings 

were put into effect by the French revolutionists. 

1763 Peace of Paris. Ended the Seven Years’ War and gave to England 

a colonial empire in India and North America at the expense of 
France. 


Table of Events and Dates 667 

1768-1779 Voyages of Captain James Cook. Greatly increased geographi¬ 
cal knowledge of the Pacific Ocean and its archipelagoes. 

1769 Arkwright’s “ water frame,” 1779 Crompton’s “ mule,” and 1785 
Cartwright’s power loom. 

1781-1782 Watt’s steam engine patented. The steam engine had previ¬ 
ously served only for pumping; henceforth it could be applied to 
manufacturing and transportation. 

1776 Declaration of Independence. 

1783 Peace of Paris and Versailles. Ended the War of the American 
Revolution. 

1787 Constitution of the United States framed. 

1789 Meeting of the Estates-General in France. The first step toward 
the French Revolution. 

1803 Louisiana Purchase. Made possible a greater United States. 

1804 The Code Napoleon promulgated. The most lasting memorial of 

the Napoleonic era. 

1807 Fulton’s steamboat, the “ Clermont,” in successful operation. 
1814-1815 Congress of Vienna. Remade the map of Europe after the 
revolutionary and Napoleonic era. 

1815 Battle of Waterloo. Brought about the final overthrow of Napo¬ 
leon Bonaparte. 

1823 Monroe Doctrine enunciated. Has prevented European interference 
in the affairs of the New World. 

1825 Stockton and Darlington Railway opened. The first line over which 

passengers and freight were carried by steam power. 

1826 Independence of the Spanish-American colonies. 

1830-1831 The “ July Revolution ” in Europe. Overthrew absolutism and 
divine right in France and created modern Belgium. 

1832 Reform Act in Great Britain. The first step in democratizing the 

British government.' 

1833 Abolition by Great Britain of slavery in the British West Indies. 

1837 Morse’s first telegraph instrument exhibited. 

1838 The Atlantic Ocean crossed by the “ Great Western.” The first steam¬ 

ship to make the trip without using sails or recoaling on the way. 

1839 Lord Durham’s Report. Embodied liberal proposals for colonial self- 

government, which were subsequently adopted by Great Britain 
for Canada and other overseas possessions. 

1848-1849 The “ February Revolution ” in Europe. Made France again 
a republic and led to revolutionary upheavals in Italy, Germany, 
and the Austrian Empire. 

1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition at London. The first of the great inter¬ 
national expositions. 

1854 Treaty between Japan and the United States. The first step in break¬ 
ing down Japan’s traditional isolation. 


668 


Appendix 


1858-1861 Russian serfdom abolished by Alexander II. 

1859 Darwin’s “ Origin of Species ” published. Presentation of the 
evolutionary theory. 

1861-1865 Civil War in the United States. 

1863 Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. 

1864 International Red Cross Society founded. Has become the greatest 

humanitarian organization in the world. 

1866 Atlantic Cable laid. The first of the many cables which now elec¬ 

trically bridge all the oceans. 

1867 End of the Japanese shogunate. 

1869 Suez Canal opened. 

1870 Rome occupied by Italian troops. Unification of Italy completed. 

1871 German Empire proclaimed at Versailles. 

1874 Universal Postal Union established. An important agency in inter¬ 

nationalization. 

1875 First telephone patented by A. G. Bell. 

1895 Discovery of the X-rays by Rontgen and 1898, of radium by the 
Curies. 

1899 Meeting of the First Hague Peace Conference. 

1900 Trans-Siberian Railway completed. 

1903 S. P. Langley’s airplane and 1908 Wright Brothers’ airplane. 

1909 North Pole reached by Robert E. Peary and 1911 South Pole reached 
by R. Amundsen. 

1912 China becomes a republic. 

1914 Panama Canal opened. 

1914-1918 World War. 

1917 The Russian Revolution and establishment of Bolshevism in Russia. 

1919 Peace Conference at Versailles. 

1920 First meeting of the League of Nations. 

1921-1922 Washington Conference on the Limitation of Armament. 

1922 “ World Court ” organized. 

1925 The Locarno Conference. 


INDEX AND PRONOUNCING 
VOCABULARY 


Note. —The pronunciation of most proper names is indicated either by a simplified spell¬ 
ing or by their accentuation and division into syllables. The diacritical marks employed are 
those found in Webster’s New International Dictionary and are the following: 


a as in ale. 

4 “ “ sen4te. 
a “ “ c&re 
S, “ “ am. 
a “ “ account, 
a u “ arm. 
a “ “ ask. 
d “ “ sofa, 
e “ “ eve. 

4 “ “ event, 
e “ “ end. 
e “ “ recent. 

6 “ “ maker. 

I “ “ ice. 
i “ “ Ill. 


o as in old. 

6 “ “ 6 bey. 

6 “ “ orb. 
o “ “ odd. 
o “ “ soft, 
o “ “ connect, 
u “ “ use. 

4 “ “ unite, 
u “ “ urn. 
u “ “ up. 
u “ “ circws. 
ii “ “ menii. 
do as in food, 
do “ “ foot, 
ou “ “ out. 


oi as in oil. 

ch “ “ chair. 

g “ “ go. 

ng“ “ sing. 

q “ “ iqk. 

th “ “ then. 

th “ “ thin. 

tu “ “ nature. 

du“ “ verdure. 

k for ch as in Ger. ich, ach. 

n as in Fr. bon. 

y “ “ yet. 

zh for z as in azure. 


Abelard (a-ba-lar'), 302, 303. 
Absolutism, Oriental, 45, 46, 66 , 
67; Roman, 156,204; medieval, 
264; modern, 358, 359, 365, 366, 
368, 375, 377, 378, 382, 385, 387, 
390, 392, 512, 530. 

Abyssinia (5b-I-sin'I-d), 543. 
Achaean (a-ke'&n) League, the, 128. 
A-crop'o-lis of Athens, the, 117. 
Actium (ak'shl-dm), naval battle 
of, 155. 

Act of Settlement, the, 385, 386. 
Act of Supremacy, the, 351. 

JEge&n (e-je'dn) peoples, the, 95-98. 
iEgean Sea, 94. 
iEschylus ( 8 s'k!-lus), 180. 
iEt'na, Mount, 131. 
iE-to'li-an League, the, 128. 

Africa, geography and peoples of, 
538-540; exploration of, 540- 
542; partitioned, 542-547. 


Agriculture, beginnings of, 13; 
Oriental, 44, 45, 70, 71; Roman, 
134, 150. 151, 162; medieval, 
277; modern, 409, 448-452. 
Ahura Mazda (a/hob-ramaz'da),81, 
208. 

Airplane, the, 439. 

Airship, the, 439, 440. 
Aix-la-Chapelle (aks-la-sha-pgl'), 
Peace of, 376, 400 
Alaska, 426, 582. 

Albania, 533. 

Alchemy, 309. 

Al'dus Ma-nu'ti-us, 309. 

Alexander the Great, 121-124, 145. 
Al-ex-an'dri-a, 123, 126, 127, 155, 
159, 188. 

Allah (al'd), 245. 

Alphabet, the, 29 and note 1. 
Alsace (al-sas'), 369, 511, 512, 525. 
See also Lorraine. 


669 




670 Index and Pronouncing Vocabulary 


Amendments to the American Con¬ 
stitution, 423, 424, 637, 638. 

Am-en-ho'tep IV, Egyptian king, 
80. 

America, the Northmen in, 229; 
discovered by Columbus, 337; 
Spanish explorations and con¬ 
quests in, 343, 344; the Old 
World and the New, 344-346; 
Dutch settlements in, 398, 399; 
French and English colonization 
of, 402-406; the Thirteen Col¬ 
onies, 406-413; rivalry of France 
and England in, 413-415; the 
American Revolution, 416-422; 
formation of the United States, 
422-424; Latin, 570-581, 584- 
586; expansion of the United 
States, 581-584; British North, 
586-588. 

American Revolution, the, 416- 
422, 488. 

Am-phic'ty-o-nies, 104. 

Amundsen (a'mun-sSn), 589, note 
1, 590. 

Amur (a'moor) Valley, 549, 553. 

Amusements, Roman, 177-179; 
medieval, 237, 240. 

Anatolia, 548. 

Ancestor worship, Chinese, 43, 44; 
Roman, 136, 137, 214. 

Anglicanism, 352, 356, 379. 

Anglo-Saxons, the, 219, 220, 321. 

Animals, domestication of, 13, 62; 
worship of, 78, 79; cruelty to, 
314, 315, 627. 

Anne, Queen, 385, 386, 520. 

Antarctic exploration, 590. 

Anthony, Miss Susan B., 632. 

Antioch (an'ti-ok), 126. 

Antiquity of man, 2-6. 

Antony, 155, 156. 

Ap'en-nine Mountains, 130. 

A-pol'lo, 101, 104, 114. 

• Aqueducts, Roman, 198, 199. 

Arabia, 244, 548, 549. 

“Arabic ” numerals, the, 31, 306. 

Arabs, the, 25, 26, 223, 244-251, 
549. 


Ar-be'la, battle of, 123. 

Arbitration, international, 610-612. 

Ar-chi-me'des, 188. 

Architecture, Oriental, 46, 47, 83, 
85; iEgean, 96; Greek, 193- 
195; Roman, 197-200; Byzan¬ 
tine, 242; Arab, 251; medieval, 
298-301; Renaissance, 328, 329, 
330; modern, 658, 659. 

Arctic exploration, 589, 590. 

Argentina, 574. 

Ar'gos, 103, 105. 

Arianism, 214. 

Ar-is-tar'chus, 189. 

Ar-is-toph'a-nes, 181. 

Aristotle (ar'is-tot’l), 121, 122, 186, 
187, 305, 306, 645. 

A'ri-us, 214. 

Arkwright, Richard, 430. 

Armor, medieval, 237, 238. 

Art, Palaeolithic, 10; Oriental, 46, 
47, 83-85; iEgean, 96; Greek, 
117, 193-196; Roman, 197-200; 
Byzantine, 242, 243; Arab, 251; 
modern, 658, 659. See also 

Architecture, Painting, Sculp¬ 
ture. 

Articles of Confederation, the, 422. 

Artisans, Oriental, 45, 71; Greek 
and Roman, 116, 161; medieval, 
289-292; modern, 362, 363, 
452-455. 

Aryans (ar'yans), the, 26, 52, 58, 
59. 

Asia, geography and peoples of, 
37-39; medieval explorations in, 
331, 332; opening-up and parti¬ 
tion of, 547-550. 

As-syr'i-a, 66, 67. 

Astrology, Babylonian, 79; med¬ 
ieval, 310. 

Astronomy, ancient, 85, 86, 189; 
modern, 643, 644, 646. 

Athens, political development of, 
106; in the Persian wars; 109- 
114; ascendancy of, 114-118; 
rivalry of, with Sparta, 118, 119; 
defeated by Philip II, 120. 

Athletics, Greek, 102. 




Index and Pronouncing Vocabulary 671 


Atlantis, 337. 

At'til-la the Hun, 255. 

Au-gus'tus, 155, 156, 157, 160, 183. 
Australia, exploration of, 425; 
settlement of, 561, 562; the 
Australian Commonwealth, 562, 
563. 

Austria, 373, 374, 392, 489, 491, 
492, 493, 496, 501, 502, 503, 504, 
505, 508, 509, 523, 524, 533. 
Austrian Succession, the, War of, 
376, 400, 414 

Austro-Prussian War, the, 509, 510. 
Austro-Sardinian War, the, 503, 
504, 629. 

Automobile, the, 438, 439. 

Azores (a-zorz'), the, 334, 338. 
Aztecs, the, 341. 

Ba'ber, 399. 

Bab'y-lon, 64, 66, 123, 124. 
Babylonia, geography of, 64; a 
seat of early civilization, 64, 65; 
history of, in antiquity, 65, 
66 . 

Bacon, Roger, 306, 307, 311. 
Bagdad (bag-dad'), 249, 251. 
Banking, 72, 298, 445. 

Baptists, the, 639. 

Basilicas, Roman, 198. 

Bastille (bas-tel'), the, 476. 
Bec-ca-ri'a, 625. 

Beethoven (ba'to-ven), 657. 
Behaim (ba'hlm), Martin, 336. 
Belgium, 496, 600, 610, 618. 

Bell, A. G., 442. 

Benedictine Rule, the, 271, 272. 
Bengal (b&n-gol'), 402. 

Bering, Vitus, 426, 582. 
Bes-sa-ra'bi-a, 529. 

Bible, the, translations of, 350, 351. 
Bill of Rights, the, 385, 479. 
Biology, modern, 648, 649. 
Bismarck, Otto von, 509-511. 
Black Death, the, 282, 283. 

Blanc (blaN), Louis, 461, 462. 

Boers (boors), the, 398, 544, 545. 
Boleyn (bool'In), Anne, 351, 352. 
Bolivar (b6-le'var), 571, 572, 573. 


Bologna (bo-lon'ya), university of, 
303. 

Bol-she-vi-ki', the, 527-530. 

Book of Common Prayer, the, 352, 
379. 

Book of the Dead, Egyptian, 82. 

Booth, William, 628. 

Bossuet (bo-su-8'), 368. 

Bourbon (boor'bun) dynasty, the, 
365, 490, 494._ 

Bourgeoisie (boor-zhwa-ze'), the, 
362, 463, 479, 480, 494, 515, 527, 
531. 

“Boxers,” the, 554, 610. 

Brahma (bra'md), 55, 56. 

Brahmanism. See Hinduism. 

Brazil, 342, 343, 573, 574, 575, 576. 

Britain, conquest and Romaniza- 
tion of, 157. See also England. 

British Empire, the, 536, 537, 619, 
620-622. 

Bronze, 14, 15, 74, 96, 98. 

Bruges (bruzh), 296. 

Bryan, W. J., 611. 

Buddha (bdo'dd), Gautama, 55, 56. 

Buddhism, 50, 56-58, 556, 566. 

Bulgaria, 256, 523, 600. 

Bulgarians, the, 255, 256, 258. 

Bur-gun'di-ans, the, 218, 220, 222. 

Burke, Edmund, 418. 

Burma, 550, 552, 553. 

Byzantine Empire, the, 241-244. 

Byzantium (bi-z&n'sh!-#m), 107, 
204, note 1, 241. See also Con¬ 
stantinople. 

Cabinet system, the, 521, 522, 533. 

Cables, submarine, 441, 442. 

Cabot, John, 404. 

Cadiz (ka'dSz), 75. 

Caesar (se'zdr), Julius, 153-155, 
183, 216, 262. 

Cairo (kl'ro), 61, 250, 253. 

Calendar, the, development of, 
32-34, 85, 86; reform of, 661, 
662. 

Caliphate, the, 249, 250. 

Calles (k&l'y&O, Elias, 579. 

Calvin, John, 350, 351. 




672 


Index and Pronouncing Vocabulary 


Calvinism, 351, 356. 

Cam-by'ses, Persian king, 108. 

Camoens (k&m'o-Sns), 654. 

Canada, French settlement of, 403; 
acquired by England, 414; the 
“Tories ” in, 419, 586; the Do¬ 
minion of, 587, 588. 

Canals, 436. 

Cape of Good Hope, 335, 397, 398, 
544. 

Cape-to-Cairo Railway, 546, 547. 

Capet (ka-pS'), Hugh, 262, 320. 

Capetian (kd-pe'sh&n) dynasty, 
the, 262, 263. 

Car-a-cal'la, Roman emperor, 158. 

Cardinals, the, 275. 

Carnegie (kar-n8g'i), Andrew, 608, 
629, 636. 

Car'thage, a Phoenician colony, 75; 
wars of, with Rome, 143-146. 

Cartier (kar-tya/), Jacques, 403. 

Cartwright, Edmund, 432. 

Caste in India, 53, 54, 552. 

Castles, feudal, 236, 237. 

Catacombs, the, 211. 

Cathedrals, medieval, 298-301. 

Catherine the Great, 390, 391. 

Catholic Church. See Greek 
Church, Roman Church. 

Caucasian (ko-ka'shan) Race, the, 
20, 38, 58, 566, 567, 576. 

Caucasus (ko'kd-sus) Mountains, 
37. 

Cavour (ka-voor'), Count, 503, 
505. 

Censorship of the press, 354. 

Central-American republics, the, 
577, 578. 

Cervantes (ser-v&n'tez), 655. 

Chaeronea (kgr-6-ne'd), battle of, 

120 . 

Chalons (sha-ldN'), battle of, 255. 

Champlain (sham-plan'), Samuel 
de, 403. 

Charity and philanthropy, 164, 
165, 215, 269, 628-630. 

Charlemagne (sharl'le-man), 223— 
225, 226, 230, 231, 262, 275, 
298, 301. 


Charles I, king of England, 379- 
381,405; 11,382-384,405. 

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, 
338 and note 2, 349, 351, 352, 
396. 

Charles X, king of France, 493, 
494, 497. 

Chaucer, 321. 

Chemistry, modern, 647, 648. 

Chess and checkers, 313, 314. 

Chile, 574. 

China, the name, 39, note 1; 
geography of, 39-42; peoples of, 
42, 43; civilization of, 43-51; 
during the nineteenth and twen¬ 
tieth centuries, 552-555. 

Chino-Japanese War, the, 554, 558. 

Chivalry, 239, 240. 

Christianity, preparation for, 205- 
209; rise and spread of, 209- 
212; triumph of, 212-214; in¬ 
fluence of, on society, 215, 216; 
adopted by the Germans, 220, 
223, 229; separation of the Greek 
and Roman Churches, 243; in 
western Europe, during the 
Middle Ages, 266-276; the 
Reformation, 347-352, 354- 

356; the Catholic Counter 
Reformation, 352-354; modern, 
630, 636-639. See also Greek 
Church, Protestantism, Roman 
Church. 

Church and State, separation of, 
638. 

Church of England. See Anglican¬ 
ism. 

Cicero (sis'e-ro), 154, 182, 183. 

Cities, Greek, 103, 104, 167, 168; 
Hellenistic, 125, 126; Roman, 
159, 160, 167, 168; medieval, 
283-288; modern, 464-466. 

Civilization, nature of, 1; rise of, 
1, 2; centers of early, 15, 17; 
Chinese, 39, 43-51; Indian, 
53-59; in the Near East, 69- 
88 ; Aegean, 95-98; Athenian, 
114-118; Hellenistic, 124-128; 
Etruscan, 132; classical, 167- 



Index and Pronouncing Vocabulary 673 


201; Byzantine, 242-244; Arab, 
250, 251; medieval, 266-325; 
modern, 643-663. 

Civil War, American, 621. 

Claudius, Roman emperor, 157. 

Cle-o-pa'tra, 156. 

Clergy, medieval, 270, 271, 360. 

Clive, Robert, 401, 402. 

Clotilda, 223. 

Clovis, king of the Franks, 223. 

Cnossus (nos'us), 96. 

Coal, 434. 

Code Napoleon, the, 483, 501, 632. 

Colombia, 573. 

Colonial policy, Portuguese, 342; 
Spanish, 343, 571; French, 404; 
English, 416, 417, 422; Dutch, 
561. 

Colonies and dependencies: Portu¬ 
guese, 342, 343, 397, 543, 560, 
573; Spanish, 343, 344, 543, 560, 
570-573; Dutch, 397-399, 560, 
561; French, 402-404, 413, 414, 
544, 548, 550, 581; English, 404- 
406, 414, 420, 544-547, 548, 549, 
550, 552; Belgian, 543; Italian, 
543, 544; German, 543, 561. 

Colonization, Phoenician, 74, 75; 
Greek, 106-108. 

Columbus, Christopher, 192, 337, 
339. 

Combination Acts, the, 453, 455. 

Commerce, rise of, 72-74; Phoeni¬ 
cian, 74, 75; Cretan, 97, 99; 
Greek, 106; Roman, 160, 161; 
Byzantine, 242; influence of the 
crusades on, 253; medieval, 294- 
296, 342, 343; modern, 344, 
444-448. 

Common Law, the, 264, 383,411, 
518. 

Commonwealth and Protectorate, 
the, in England, 382. 

Companies, trading, 395, 396. 

Compass, mariner’s, 307. 

Comte (koNt), 653. 

Concert of Europe, the, 610. 

Concordat, the, 483, 484. 

Confucianism, 49, 50. 


Confucius (kon-fu'shf-ws), 47, 49, 
50. 

Constantine (kbn'stan-tm) the 
Great, 213, 214. 

Constantinople, 204 and note 1, 
222, 241, 242, 243, 244, 249, 257, 
258, 547. 

Constitutions: American, 423, 

424, 620, 637, 638; French, 478, 
479, 482, 488, 498; British, 518 ; 
Russian, 529; German, 531, 
532; Japanese, 558; Latin 
American, 573. 

Consulate, Napoleon’s, 482, 484. 

Cook, James, voyages of, 192, 425, 
426, 561. 

Co-per'ni-cus, 643, 644, 645. 

Copper, 14, 62, 96. 

Cor'do-va, 249. 

Corinth, 103, 105, 121. 

Corneille (kor-na'y’), 655. 

Corn Laws, the, 447. 

Cor'pus Ju'ris Ci-vi'lis, the, 163, 
164, 303. 

Corsica, 143, 144. 

Corvee (kor-va/), the, 364. 

Cosmopolitanism, 659-663. 

Costume, Greek and Roman, 171; 
medieval, 318; modern, 659. 

Cotton gin, Whitney’s, 432. 

Councils, Church: Nicaea, 214; 
Trent, 353. 

Counter Reformation, Catholic, 
352-354. 

Counting and measuring, 30-32, 
661. 

Cranmer, Archbishop, 352. 

Crassus, 153, 154. 

Creed of Nicaea, the, 214, 274. 

Crete, 63, 94, 96, 97, 98. 

Crises, financial, 446, 447. 

Cro-Magnon (kro-ma-nyoN') man, 

6 . 

Crompton, Samuel, 431. 

Cromwell, Oliver, 380-382. 

Crusades, the, 251-254, 324, 331. 

Culture, 34-36. 

Curie (kti-re'), Pierre and Marie, 
647. 



674 Index and Pronouncing Vocabulary 


Cyprus (si'prws), 14, 63, 97, 108, 
253. 

Cyrene (si-re'ne), 108, 143. 

Cy'rus the Great, 108. 

Czechoslovakia (chek-6-slo-va/- 
ki-a), 524, 533. 

Dacia (da/shi-d), 157, 158. 

Da Gama, Vasco, 335, 339. 

Danes, the, 230, 321. 

Dante (dan'ta), 328. 

Danube River, 109, 156. 

Da-ri'us I, the Great, 109, 110, 111; 
III, 122, 123. 

Darwin, Charles, 649. 

Deccan (dgk'an), the, 52. 

Declaration of Independence, the, 
387, 419. 

Declaration of the Rights of Man, 
the, 479, 637. 

Delhi (dgl'e), 551. 

De'li-an League, the, 114, 116. 

De'los, 104, 114. 

Delphi (del'fi), 101, 103. 

Demarcation Line, the, 337, 338 
and note 1. 

De-me'ter, 207. 

Democracy, absence of, in the 
Orient, 66; Greek, 104, 105, 
113-116; the Roman Church 
and, 269; the Dutch as pioneers 
of, 396; modern, 424, 470-474, 
490, 498, 499, 530, 532, 533, 538, 
574, 641, 642. 

De-mos'the-nes, 120. 

Denmark, 226, 350. 

Diaz (de'ath), Bartholomew, 334; 
Porfirio, 578, 579. 

Dionysus (di-o-nl's&s), 176. 

Directory, French, 481. 

Disarmament, 616-618. 

Disraeli, Benjamin, 516. 

Divination, Babylonian, 79; Ro¬ 
man, 137. 

Divine right of kings, 359, 368, 530, 
531. See also Absolutism. 

Divinity of kings, 359. 

Divorce, 632, 633. 

Domestic system, the, 452. 


Dominicans, the, 273. 

Dom Pedro II, 573. 

Drake, Sir Francis, 424. 

Drama, Greek, 176,177; medieval, 
316,317; modern, 654, 655. 

Dravidians, the, 20, note 1, 52, 59. 

Dunant, Henri, 629. 

Dupleix (dii-pleks'), 400-402. 

Durham Report, the, 587. 

Dwellings, Greek and Roman, 171- 
173; medieval, 317, 318. 

East India Company, Dutch, 397, 
398, 560; French, 400; English, 
400, 551. 

East Indies, Dutch, 397, 398, 560, 
561. 

Ebert (a'bert), Friedrich, 531. 

Economics, modern, 652, 653. 

Economic Transformation, the, 
428-468. 

“Edict of Milan,” the, 213. 

Edison, Thomas A., 442. 

Education, Oriental, 87, 88; Greek 
and Roman, 168-170; medieval, 
301-305; modern, 408, 409, 
631, 633-636. 

Edward I, king of England, 260, 
297; VI, 352; VII, 518. 

Egypt, geography of, 61, 62; a 
seat of early civilization, 62, 63; 
history of, in antiquity, 63, 64, 
123, 124, 156; in the nineteenth 
and twentieth centuries, 545, 
546, 565. 

Electricity, 438. 

Eleu-sin'i-an mysteries, the, 206, 
207, 214. 

Elizabeth, queen of England, 352, 
378, 400, 405. 

Emigration, European, 466. 

Encyclopedists, the, 390. 

England, conquered by Teutonic 
peoples, 229, 230; expansion of, 
during the Middle Ages, 260, 
262; the Reformation in, 351, 
352; the Puritan Revolution, 
377-382; the “Glorious Revo¬ 
lution,” 382-386; rivalry of, 



Index and Pronouncing Vocabulary 675 


with France, in India and North 
America, 399-402, 413-416; loss 
of the Thirteen Colonies by, 416- 
422; at war with Napoleon 
Bonaparte, 486, 487; movement 
for parliamentary reform in, 
512-517; government of, 518- 
522. 

English language, the, 164, 321, 
660, 661. 

“ Enlightened despots/’ the, 390- 
392. 

Eoliths, 8, note 1. 

Ep-i-cu-re'an-ism, 187. 

Ep-i-cu'rus, 187. 

E-ras'mus, 329, 330. 

Er-a-tos'the-nes, 191, 192. 

Eric the Red, 229. 

Ericsson, Leif (Sr'ik-swn, lif), 229. 

Es-per-an'to, 660. 

Estates-General, French, 477, 478. 

Es-tho'ni-a, 524, 533. 

E-tru'ri-a, 131, 132. 

E-trus'cans, the, 131, 132, 133, 134, 
137, 141, 197. 

Euclid (u'klld), 188. 

Euphrates (u-fra'tez) River, 64. 

Eu-rip'i-des, 181. 

Europe, in the Ice Age, 4, 5; 
Palaeolithic, 6-10; Neolithic, 
11-13; geography and peoples 
of, 90-93. 

Excommunication, 268. 

Exploration, 74, 75, 191; medieval, 
228, 229, 231; modern, 334, 335, 
337-339, 424-426, 589-592. 

Expositions, universal, 661. 

Factory Acts, British, 456. 

Factory system, the, 452, 453, 455. 

Fairs, medieval, 293. 

“ Fall ” of Rome, the, 203-205. 

Far East, the, 38, 39. 

Fascisti (fa-she'ste), the, 532. 

“February Revolution,” the, 497, 
498. 

Ferdinand of Aragon, 263. 

Ferdinand VII, king of Spain, 490, 
572. 


Festivals, medieval, 315, 316. 

Feudalism, 230-235, 253, 263, 264, 
285, 286, 308. 

Field, Cyrus W., 441, 442. 

Finance, international, 446. 

Finland, 229, 529, 533. 

Finns, the, 92, 229. 

Florence, 297, 298, 327. 

Florida, 414, 421. 

France, physical and racial, 262; 
unification of, during the Middle 
Ages, 262, 263; under Louis 
XIV, 365-370; rivalry of, with 
England, in India and North 
America, 399-402, 413-416; al¬ 
liance of, with the Thirteen 
Colonies, 419, 420; the French 
Revolution, 474-481, 487-489; 
the Napoleonic era, 481-487; 
restoration of Louis XVIII, 490; 
the “July Revolution,” 493, 
494; the “February Revolu¬ 
tion,” 497, 498; under Na¬ 
poleon III, 498, 503, 510-512. 

Franciscans, the, 273. 

Francis Joseph I, Austrian emperor, 
499, 503, 509, 578. 

Franco-German War, the, 510, 511. 

Franklin, Benjamin, 407, 413, 423, 
475, 646. 

Franks, the, 219, 220, 222, 223, 274. 

Frederick the Great, 374-377, 391, 
392, 635. 

French language, the, 320, 366, 
660, 661. 

French Revolution, the, 474-481, 
487-489. 

Friars, the, 272-274. 

Fry, Mrs. Elizabeth, 626. 

Fulton, Robert, 436, 440. 

Future life, the, ideas of, 49, 56, 
81, 82, 101. 

Galen, 191. 

Galileo (gal-i-le'o), 644, 645. 

Games, medieval, 313-315. 

Ganges River, 52, 55, 59, 124. 

Garibaldi (ga-rS-bal'de), 504, 
505. 




676 Index and Pronouncing Vocabulary 


Gaul (gol), conquest and Roman- 
ization of, 154, 262. 

Gauls, the, 141, 144, 262. 

Geneva, 351, 629. 

Geology, modern, 648. 

George, David Lloyd, 606, 612. 

George I, king of England, 386; 
II, 406; III, 417, 419, 425, 448. 

Germanic Confederation, the, 508, 
509. 

Germans, the, early culture of, 
216-218; their invasions of the 
Roman world, 218, 219; fusion 
of, with the Romans, 220. 

Germany, physical features of, 
216; political condition of, 
during the Middle Ages, 226; 
the Reformation in, 347-350; 
unification of, 507-512; republic 
of, 531, 532. 

Gladiatorial combats, 178,179,215. 

Gladstone, W. E., 516. 

“Glorious Revolution/’ the, 382- 
386, 413, 418, 487, 512. 

Goethe (gu'te), 655. 

Good Hope, Cape of, 335, 398. 

Gothic architecture, 300, 301. 

Gracchus (grak'iis), Tiberius, 150, 
151; Gaius, 151, 152. 

Gra-na'da, 263. 

Great Britain. See England, 
Scotland, Wales. 

Great Wall of China, the, 40, 254. 

Greece, physical features of, 94, 95. 

Greek Church, the, 243. 

Greek language, the, 98, 103. 

Greeks, the, prehistoric migrations 
of, 98; during the Homeric Age, 
98-100; religion and religious 
institutions of, 101-103; their 
city-states, 103-106; colonial 
expansion of, 106-108; the 
Persian wars, 108-114; ascend¬ 
ancy of Athens, 114-118; con¬ 
quered by Macedonia, 119—121; 
form leagues, 128; become sub¬ 
ject to Rome, 147; during the 
nineteenth century, 523. 

Greenland, 229. 


Grey, Earl, 514, 515. 

Grotius (gro'shi-^s), Hugo, 608, 
609. 

Guilds, Chinese, 45; medieval, 
289-292, 362, 363, 452. 

Gunpowder, 48, 307, 308. 

Gutenberg (goo't&n-b&rK), 308. 

Habeas Corpus Act, the, 383, 411. 

Hague Peace Conferences, the, 596, 
597. 

Hague Tribunal, the, 611, 612, 616. 

Haiti (ha'tl), 581. 

Hamitic languages, 25. 

Hammurabi (ham-bo-ra'bS), Baby¬ 
lonian king, 66; code of, 77, 78. 

Han'ni-bal, 145, 146. 

Hanno, voyage of, 75, 191. 

Han-se-at'ic League, the, 295. 

Hapsburg (haps'bdorK) dynasty, 
the, 373 and note 2 , 491 . 

Hargreaves, James, 430. 

Harvey, William, 645. 

Hastings, battle of, 229. 

Hebrews, the, 78, 81, 82. See also 
Jews. 

Hegira (he-ji'rd), the, 247 and 
note 1. 

Hejaz (h£j-az'), 549. 

Hellenistic Age, the, 124-128. 

Henry IV, king of France, 365, 609, 
637. 

Henry VIII, king of England, 351, 
352, 378. 

Henry, Prince, the Navigator, 333, 
334. 

He-rod'o-tus, 181. 

High schools, American, 634. 

Himalaya (hl-ma'ld-ya) Moun¬ 
tains, 52. 

Hinduism, 54-56, 59, 566. 

Hip-par'chus, 189. 

Hip-poc'ra-tes, 189. 

History, definition and scope of, 1; 
beginnings of, 17; subdivisions 
of, 17, 18; modern study of, 653. 

Hoangho (hwang'ho) River, 41, 42. 

Hohenzollern (ho'en-tsol-ern) dy¬ 
nasty, the, 374 and note 1, 531. 




Index and Pronouncing Vocabulary 677 


Holland, rise of, 396; acquires 
a colonial empire, 397-399; sepa¬ 
ration of Belgium from, 496. 

Holland, J. P., 440. 

Holy Alliance, the, 609, 610. 

Holy Roman Empire, the, 226, 373, 
508. 

Homer, 99, 103, 180. 

Homeric Age, the, 98-100. 

Homeric poems, the, 95, 98, 99,180. 

Hos'pi-tal-ers, the, order of, 252, 
253, 607. 

Horace, 183. 

Howard, John, 626. 

Hudson, Henry, 398. 

Huguenots (hu'ge-nots), the, 636, 
637. 

Hungarians. See Magyars. 

Hungary, 255, 256, 496, 499, 523, 
524, 525, 533. 

Huns, the, 254, 255. 

Huss (hus), John, 347. 

Hutton, James, 648. 

Hyksos (hik'sos), the, 63. 

Hymns, Latin, 321. 

Ice Age, the, 3-5. 

Iceland, 228. 

Imperialism, 537, 538, 563, 565, 
566, 597. 

Incas, the, 341, 342. 

Inclosures, 449, 450. 

“Index of Prohibited Books,” the, 
353, 354. 

India, the name, 51, note 1; geog¬ 
raphy and peoples of, 51-53; 
civilization of, 53-59, 124; ri¬ 
valry of France and England in, 
399-402; a part of the British 
Empire, 550-552. 

Indians, American, 339-342. 

Indo-China, 550, 552, 553, 565. 

Indo-European languages, 26, 58, 
92, 98, 132, 216. 

Indulgences, 348. 

Indus River, 52, 59, 124. 

Industrial Revolution, the. See 
Economic Transformation. 

Industry, Oriental, 44, 45, 71; at 


Athens, 116,117; at Rome, 161; 
in medieval cities, 289-292; 
government regulation of, 455- 
458. 

Inquisition, the, 354, 571. 

Insurance, 444, 445. 

International law, 608, 609. 

International relations, 593-622. 

Invention, development of, 428, 
429. 

Ionia, 98, 99. 

Ionian Revolt, the, 109, 110. 

Iraq (e-rak'), 549, 565. 

Ireland, 260, 262, 472, 523. 

Irish Free State, the, 523 and 
note 1. 

Ir-ne'ri-us, 303. 

Iron, introduction of, 14, 15, 98; 
use of, in modern industry, 433, 
434. 

Isabella of Castile, 263, 338. 

I'sis, 208. 

Islam (ls'ldm), 247-249, 566. 

Issus, battle of, 122, 123. 

Italy, geography of, 130, 131; early 
peoples of, 131-133; expansion 
of Roman power over, 140-142 ; 
political condition of, during the 
Middle Ages, 225, 226; the 
Renaissance in, 326-330; unifi¬ 
cation of, 499-507, 525. 

James I, king of England, 378, 379, 
405; II, 384, 405, 413. 

Jamestown, 405. 

Japan, geography and people of, 
555, 556; civilization of, 556, 
557; during the nineteenth and 
twentieth centuries, 557-559. 

Je-ho'vah, 81. 

Jenghiz Khan (jSn'jiz Kan'), 256. 

Jerusalem, 211, 252, 253. 

Jesuits, the. See Society of Jesus. 

Jesus, 209 and note 1, 212, 248. 

Jews, the, 78, 211, 212, 213, 266, 
297, 548, 639. 

John, king of England, 264. 

Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, 
392. 



678 Index and Pronouncing Vocabulary 


Jousts and tournaments, 420. 
Juarez (hwa'rSth), 578. 

Jugoslavia (yob'go-slav-I-a), 524, 
533. 

“July Revolution,” the, 493-496. 
Jupiter, 137. 

Jus-tin'i-an, Roman emperor, 163. 
“Just price,” the, 293. 

Kaaba (ka'd-bd), the, 245,246, 247. 
Kant (kant), Immanuel, 609, 651, 
652. 

Kepler, 644, 645. 

Kiev (ke'ySf), 257. 

Knighthood, 239. 

Koran (ko-ran'), the, 247, 248. 
Korea, 552, 554, 558, 559, 565. 
Kossuth (kSsh'oot), 499. 

Kublai Khan (koo'bli Kan'), 331. 

Labor legislation, 455-458. 

Labor movement, the, 452-455. 
Lafayette (la-fa-yet'), 475, 494. 
Land tenure, 45, 233, 235, 409, 410, 
450-452. 

Langley, S. P., 439. 

Languages of man, 25, 26, 660, 661. 
Lao Tze (la'6-tsti'), 50. 

La Salle (la sal'), Robert de, 403, 
581. 

Latin colonies, the, 142, 146, 151. 
Latin language, the, 164, 262, 267, 
319, 320, 660. 

Latium (la'shi-wm), 131, 133, 141. 
Latvia, 524, 529, 533. 

Lavoisier (la-vwa-zya/), 647. 

Law, Oriental, 75-78. See also 
Common Law, Corpus Juris 
Civilis. 

League of Nations, the, 612-616. 
Legion of Honor, the, 484, 485. 
Lenin (lyS'nen), Nicholas, 527, 528, 
529. 

Le-on'i-das, 112. 

Lesseps (16-sSps'), Ferdinand de, 
547, 583. 

“Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” 
487-489. 

Li-cin'i-us, Roman emperor, 213. 


Lin-nse'us, 649. 

Liquor traffic, the, 627, 628. 

Lisbon, 335, 342, 344, 397. 

Lister, Sir Joseph, 650. 

Literature, Oriental, 47, 82, 83; 
Greek, 179-182; Roman, 182- 
184; medieval, 321-323; mod¬ 
ern, 654-656. 

Lith-u-a'ni-a, 524, 529, 533. 

Livingstone, David, 542. 

Livy, 183. 

Lo-car'no pacts, the, 618. 

Locke, John, 387, 474. 

Lombards, the, 218, 220, 224, 274. 

Lombardy, 503, 504. 

Lorraine (16-ran'), 369, 511, 512, 
525. See also Alsace. 

Louis XIV, king of France, 365- 
370, 377, 387, 400, 403, 404, 413, 
485, 486, 637, 655; XV, 370 and 
note 1, 476; XVI, 477, 479, 480, 
490 and note 1; XVIII, 490, 493. 

Louis Napoleon. See Napo¬ 
leon III. 

Louis Philippe (loo-e' fe-lep'), king 
of France, 494, 497, 498. 

Louisiana, 403, 414, 581. 

Loyola (lo-yo'la), St. Ignatius, 353. 

Luther, Martin, 347-350. 

Lutheranism, 350, 356. 

Lyd'i-a, 72. 

Lyell (li'81), Sir Charles, 648. 

Macedonia (mas-e-do'ni-a), 119, 
121, 124, 147. 

Magellan, Ferdinand, 338, 339, 
343, note 1, 560. 

Magicians, medieval, 311, 312. 

Mag'na Car'ta, 264, 366, 380, 382, 
383, 385. 

Mag'na Grce'ci-a, 107, 131, 149. 

Magyars (mod'ybrs), the, 256 and 
note 1, 258. 

Mann, Horace, 634. 

Manners and customs, medieval, 
313-319; modern, 659. 

Manor, the medieval, 276-280. 

Manufacturing, inventions in, 429, 
432. 



Index and Pronouncing Vocabulary 679 


Mar'a-thon, battle of, 110, 111. 

Mar-do'ni-us, 110, 113. 

Maria Theresa (t£-re'sa), 374, 376, 
377, 392. 

Mariner’s compass, the, 48. 

Ma'ri-us, Gai'us, 152, 153. 

Marne (marn), the, battle of, 600. 

Marriage and the family, 10, 43, 
44, 76, 100, 135, 136, 164, 170, 
215, 630-633. 

Mars, 137. 

Marx, Karl, 462, 463, 531. 

Mary (wife of William III), 384, 
385 and note 1. 

Mary Stuart, queen of Scots, 378, 
note 1. 

Mary Tudor, queen of England, 
352. 

Mathematics, 30-32, 85, 188, 301, 
306, 646. 

Maximilian, emperor of Mexico, 
578. 

Mayas (ma'yas), the, 340, 341. 

Mazzini (mat-se'ne), 501, 503, 504. 

Mecca, 245, 247, 248. 

Medicine and surgery, 48, 86, 87, 
189, 190, 649, 650. 

Medina (ma-de'na), 245, 247. 

Mediterranean basin, the, 93, 94. 

Memphis (m&n'fls), 63, 123. 

Menes (me'nez), 63. 

Mercantile system, the, 394, 395, 
652. 

Metals, introduction and use of, 
14, 15. 

Methodists, the, 639. 

Metric system, the, 661. 

Metternich (mSt'er-nlx), Prince, 
492, 493, 496, 582, 610. 

Michelangelo (mi-kSl-&n / j£-lo), 
329. 

Mexico, 578, 579. 

Middle Ages, the, 212, 323, 324. 

Migrations, human, 22-25. 

Mil-ti'a-des, 110. 

Milton, John, 654. 

Mirabeau (me-ra-bo'), 478, 479. 

Miracle and morality plays, 316, 
317. 


Missions, Christian, 243, 272, 630. 

Mith'ra, 208. 

Mogul Empire, the, 399. 

Mo-ham'med, prophet, 245 and 
note 1, 247, 248, 249. 

Mohammed II, sultan, 257. 

Mohammedanism. See Islam. 

Moliere (mo-lyar'), 655. 

Moltke, 509. 

Moluccas, the, 338. 

Monarchy, Oriental, 45, 46, 66, 67. 

Monasticism, medieval, 271, 272. 

Money, 71, 72, 135, 296, 344, 345, 
445, 446. 

Mongoloid Race, the, 20, 38, 42, 
254, 566, 567. 

Mongols, the, 256, 257. 

Monotheism, 49, 80, 81, 245, 248. 

Monroe Doctrine, the, 582, 583, 
584, 586. 

Mon-te-ne'gro, 523, 524. 

Montesquieu (m6N-t&3-ke-u'), 388, 
390, 474. 

Moors, the, 263 and note 1. 

Morris dance, the, 316. 

Morse, S. F. B., 441. 

Mosaic code, the,. 78. 

Moses, 78, 248. 

Moscow (mos'ko), 257. 

Mumming, 316. 

Music, medieval and modern, 656, 
657. 

Mussolini (mus-s5-le'ne), 532. 

Mustapha Kemal (mus'ta-fa ke- 
mal'), 548. 

Myc'a-le, battle of, 113. 

Nansen, Fridtjof, 589, 590. 

Nantes (naNt), 637 . 

Naples, 107. 

Napoleon I, Bonaparte, 481-487, 
498, 501, 507, 508, 572, 581, 624, 
635, 661; III, 498, 503, 504, 510, 
511, 578, 583. 

National Assembly, French, 478, 
479, 480. 

Nationalism, modern, 472, 473, 
490, 491, 496, 499, 523-525, 538, 
564, 565, 597. 



68 o Index and Pronouncing Vocabulary 


Navigation Acts, the, 416, 447. 
Neanderthal (na-an'der-tal) man, 
6 . 

Ne-ar'chus, voyage of, 124. 

Near East, the, 61, 88. 

Negroid Race, the, 20, 38, 539, 540, 
566, 567. 

Ne-o-lith'ic Age. See New Stone 
Age. 

New Amsterdam, 398, 399. 

New Stone Age, the, 11-13. 
Newspapers, 443. 

Newton, Sir Isaac, 644, 645. 
Nibelungenlied (ne'be-loong-en- 
let), the, 322. 

New Zealand, 563. 

Nicsea (nl-se'd), Council of, 214. 
Nice (nes), 503, 504. 

Nicholas II, tsar of Russia, 526,596. 
Nile River, 61, 62. 

Nineveh (nin'e-vS), 74, 82. 

Nobel (no-bel'), Alfred, 608, 630. 
Nobility, 46, 69, 231-235, 361, 366. 
Normandy, 229. 

Normans, the, 229, 230. 

Norths German Confederation, the, 
510, 512. 

Northmen, the, 226, 228, 229. 
Norway, 226, 350, 523. 

Oceania, opening of and partition 
of, 559-561. 

Octavian. See Augustus. 

Old Regime, the, 358-393. 

Old Stone Age, the, 6-10. 
Olympian games, the, 102, 103, 
214. 

Old Testament, the, 82, 83, 127. 
Oracles, Greek, 101, 102, 214. 
Orders of Greek architecture, the, 
193-194. 

Or-te'li-us, 346. 

Os'tro-goths, the, 218, 220, 222, 
224. 

Othman, 257. 

Otto I, the Great, 225, 226, 256. 
Ottoman Turks, the, 257, 258, 263, 
295, 328, 523, 547-549. 

Owen, Robert, 460, 461. 


Pacific Ocean, discovery and ex¬ 
ploration of, 338, 343, 424-426, 
559, 560. 

Paganism, decline of, 205; aboli¬ 
tion of, 214. 

Painting, Oriental, 46, 85; iEgean, 
96; Greek, 196; Roman, 200; 
Renaissance, 329, 330; modern, 
659. 

Pa-lae-o-lith'ic Age. See Old Stone 
Age. 

Palestine, 153, 211, 548. 

Panama Canal, the, 583, 584. 

Pan-Americanism, 585, 586. 

Pan-Islamism, 566. 

Papacy. See Roman Church. 

Papal States. See States of the 
Church. 

Paris, Peace of (1763), 377, 402, 
414; (1783), 420, 581. 

Parliament, British, during the 
Middle Ages, 264, 378; under 
the Tudors and Stuarts, 378- 
386; in the nineteenth and 
twentieth centuries, 512-522. 

Parthians, the, 156. 

Pasteur (pas-ttir'), Louis, 649. 

Paul III, pope, 352, 353. 

Peace movement, the, 606-612, 
616-619. 

Peary, Robert E., 590. 

Peasants, Oriental, 45, 69, 70; 
Greek and Roman, 116, 134, 149, 
162; medieval, 277, 278, 280; 
modern, 364, 365. 

Peloponnesian War, the, 118, 181. 

Pel-o-pon-ne'sus, the, 105. 

Penal code, the, reform of, 625, 
626. 

Penn, William, 405, 427, 609, 638. 

Per'i-cles, 117. 

Perry, M. C., 557. 

Persecution, religious, 213, 214, 
352; 396, 636-638. 

Persia, empire of, 67, 68; wars of, 
with the Greeks, 108-114; con¬ 
quered by Alexander the Great, 
122, 123; modern, 547, 550. 

“Peter's Pence,” 275. 



Index and Pronouncing Vocabulary 681 


Peter the Great, 371-373, 377, 426. 

Petition of Right, the, 379, 380, 
382, 385. 

Petrarch (pe'trark), 328. 

Phid'i-as, 117. 

Petroleum, 434. 

Philip II, king of Macedonia, 119— 

121 . 

Philip II, king of Spain, 352, 396. 

Philippine Islands, 338, 343, note 1, 
560, 565. 

Philosophy, Greek, 184-187; mod¬ 
ern, 651, 652. 

Phoenicia (fe-nish'i-d), 29, 74. 

Phoenicians, the, 74, 75, 88, 97, 99. 

Physics, ancient, 188, 189; mod¬ 
ern, 646, 647. 

Physiocrats, the, 652. 

Piedmont, 502, 504. 

Pindar, 180. 

Pitt, William (Earl of Chatham), 
418. 

Plassey, battle of, 402. 

Pla-tse'a, battle of, 113. 

Plato, 186, 187, 337. 

Plutarch (ploo'tark), 182. 

Plymouth, settlement of, 405. 

Po, river, 130. 

Poland, 496, 524, 529, 533. 

Polo, Marco, 331, 337. 

Pompeii (pom-pa/ye), 160, 172, 

200 . 

Pompey (pSm'pI), 153, 154, 155. 

Population, statistics of, 19, 43, 52, 
464-466. 

Port Arthur, 550, 554, 558. 

Portugal, 333-335, 342, 343. 

Potosi (po-to-se'), silver mines of, 
344, 345. 

Poverty, 467, 468. 

Pragmatic Sanction, the, 374. 

Prehistory, 1-18. 

Printing, invention of, 48, 308, 
309. 

Prison reform, 626, 627. 

Progress, human, 2, 7, 13. 

Protestantism, characteristics of, 
354, 355; sects of, 355, 356, 407, 
408, 639. 


Provengal (pro-vaN-saT) speech, 
322 and note 1. 

Prussia, 374-377, 480, 487, 489, 
491, 493, 508-512. 

Plotemy (tSPe-ml), Greek scientist, 
189, 191, 192, 336, 337, 424. 

Public debts, 605, 606. 

Public ownership, 458, 459. 

Punic Wars, the, 143-146. 

Punjab (ptm-jab'), the, 59. 

Puritan Revolution, the, 377-382, 
487, 512. 

Puritans, the, 379, 380. 

Pyth'e-as, 191. 

Quakers, the, 607, 639. 

Quebec (city), 403, 414; (prov¬ 
ince), 587. 

Races of man, the, 19-22, 38, 566, 
567. 

Racine (ra-sen'), 655. 

Railroads, 437, 438, 459. 

Raleigh (rod!), Sir Walter, 405. 

Rameses (ram'e-sez), II, king of 
Egypt, 62, 63. 

Red Cross, the, 610, 629, 662. 

Reform Acts, the, 515-517. 

Reformation, Protestant, 347-352, 
354-356. 

Reign of Terror, the, 480. 

Religion, Palaeolithic, 10; Oriental, 
43, 44, 48-50, 54-56, 78-82; 
Greek, 101-103; Roman, 136- 
138; statistics of world religions, 
639. See also Buddhism, Chris¬ 
tianity, Hinduism, Islam. 

Renaissance (rSn-8-saNs'). the, 
326-330, 643, 654. 

Representative system, absence of, 
at Athens and Rome, 116, 148; 
development of, 264, 378, 411, 
412, 417, 418, 471, 472, 512-515, 
533. 

Revolutionary War, American, 
419, 420. 

Rhine River, 154, 157, 369. 

Rhodes (rodz), Greek city, 126. 

Rhodes, Cecil, 544, 545, 547, 630. 




682 Index and Pronouncing Vocabulary 


Rigveda, the, 58. 

Robin Hood, ballads of, 323. 

Rockefeller, John D., Sr., 629, 636. 

Roland , Song of, 322. 

Rollo, 229. 

Roman Church, the, character¬ 
istics of, 266-268; social and 
economic aspects of, 268, 269; 
the clergy, 270-274; the medi¬ 
eval Papacy, 274-276; the Ref¬ 
ormation and Counter Reforma¬ 
tion, 347-356; the Concordat, 
483, 484; loss of temporal power 
by, 505, note 1. 

Romance (ro-mans') languages, 
the, 164, 320. 

Romances, the Arthurian, 323. 

Romanesque architecture, 298, 299. 

Romanov (ro-ma'nof) dynasty, the, 
371, 526. 

Romans, the, early culture of, 134- 
138; their city-state, 138-140; 
rule of, over Italy, 140-142; at 
war with the Carthaginians, 143- 
146; supreme in the Mediter¬ 
ranean, 146-148; effects of 
foreign conquests on, 148-150; 
under the later republic, ISO- 
156; under the empire, 156-162; 
the “fall” of Rome, 203-205; 
converted to Christianity, 212- 
214. 

Rome, founding of, 133, 134; as 
the capital of the Papacy, 275, 
276; becomes the Italian capital, 
505. 

Romilly, Sir Samuel, 626. 

Rom'u-lus, 134. 

Romulus Au-gus'tu-lus, 203, 225, 
241. 

Roosevelt (ro'ze-v8lt), Theodore, 
558. 

Rousseau (roo-so'), 389, 390, 474, 
479, 572. 

Royal Society, the, 645, 646. 

Rumania, 523, 525, 529, 600. 

Ruric, 229. 

Russia, the Northmen in, 229; 
Mongol conquest of, 257; under 


Peter the Great, 370-373; the 
Russian Revolution, 526, 527; 
under the Bolsheviki, 527-530; 
expansion of, in Asia, 549, 550, 
553, 554, 558, 559, 563. 

Russians, the, 243, 370, 371. 

Russo-Japanese War, the, 558, 559. 

Sabbath, Hebrew, 78. 

St. Benedict, 271. 

St. Brandan, 337. 

St. Dominic, 273. 

St. Francis, 273. 

St. Paul, 209, 211. 

St. Peter, 209, 274. 

St. Petersburg, 373 and note 1. 

Sal'a-mis, battle of, 113. 

Salvation Army, the, 628. 

San Marino (ma-re'no), 286. 

Sanskrit language, the, 26, 58. 

Sappho (saf'o), 180. 

Sardinia, 141, 143, 144, 501, 502, 
503, 504. 

Sargon, Babylonian king, 65, 66. 

Savagery and barbarism, 2, 17. 

Savoy (sci-voi'), 502, 504. 

Saxons, the, 224. 

Schiller (shil'er), 655. 

Science, Oriental, 48, 85-87; Greek, 
187-193; medieval, 305-307; 
modern, 643-651. 

Scip'i-o, Pub'li-us, 146. 

Scotland, 260. 

Scott, Captain R. F., 590. 

Scott, Sir Walter, 656. 

Sculpture, Oriental, 46, 85; Aegean, 
96; Greek, 195, 196; Roman, 
200; Renaissance, 329, 330; 
modern, 658. 

Scythians (sith'i-ans),the, 109,110. 

Seleucia (se-lu'shi-d), 126. 

Seljuk (s61-jook') Turks, the, 251, 
252. 

Semitic languages, 25, 26. 

Sepoy Mutiny, the, 551. 

Serbia, 523, 524, 598, 600. 

Serfdom, 280-283, 286, 364, 451. 

Seven Years’ War, the, 376, 377, 
391, 402, 414, 417, 419. 




Index and Pronouncing Vocabulary 683 


Shaftesbury; Lord, 456. 

Shakespeare, 655. 

Siam (si-&m'), 550. 

Siberia, 549, 550. 

Sicily, 107, 118, 131, 141, 143, 144, 
149, 230, 501, 505. 

Si'don, 74. 

Si-le'si-a, 376, 377. 

Slavery, Oriental, 70; Greek, 116, 
117; Roman, 161, 163, 165, 215; 
medieval, 269, 280, 281; mod¬ 
ern, 410, 624, 625. 

Slave trade, the, abolition of, 623, 
624. 

Smith, Adam, 652, 653. 

Social betterment, 623-642. 

Social classes, Oriental, 46, 53, 
54, 69, 70. 

Social Democratic Party, the, 463, 
531. 

Socialism, 460-463, 531. 

Society of Jesus, the, 353. 

Sociology, modern, 653. 

Soc'ra-tes, 185. 

Sophia, electress of Hanover, 385, 
386. 

Sophists, the, 184, 185. 

Soph'o-cles, 181. 

South African War, the, 
545. 

Spain, Phoenicians and Cartha¬ 
ginians in, 75, 143, 144; an¬ 
nexed by Rome, 146; con¬ 
quered by the Visigoths and 
Moors, 223; unification of, 
during the Middle Ages, 263; 
colonial empire of, 343, 344; in 
the War of the Spanish Succes¬ 
sion, 369, 370; loses the Dutch 
Netherlands, 396; the Bourbon 
restoration in, 490. 

Spanish Succession, the, War of, 
369, 370. 

Sparta, 103, 105, 109, 112, 113, 
118, 119, 121, 128. 

Spencer, Herbert, 652, 653. 

Spenser, Edmund, 654. 

Stamp Act, the, 417. 

Stanley, Henry M., 542, 543. 


States of the Church, the, 275, 500, 
505, note 1. 

Steamboat, the, 436, 437. 

Steam engine, the, 433, 436. 
Stephenson, George, 437. 
Sto'i-cism, 187, 206. 

Stuart dynasty, the, 378, 382, 
384. 

Submarine, the, 440. 

Suez Canal, the, 546, 547, 610. 
Suffrage, manhood, 412, 424, 479, 
480, 498, 515, 516, 517, 526, 529, 
532; woman, 631, 632. 

Sulla, 152, 153. 

Su-me'ri-ans, the, 65. 

Sunday, 214 and note 1. 

Sun Yat Sen, 554, 555. 
Superstitions, medieval, 309-313. 
Susa, 123. 

Sweden, 226, 350, 523. 

Switzerland, 350, 351, 610. 
Syracuse, 107, 118, 159. 

Syria, 124, 153, 249, 252, 254, 548. 

Tacitus (t&s'l-tws), 216, 217. 

Taille (ta'y’), the, 364. 

Taoism, 50. 

Tariffs, modern, 447, 448, 508. 
Tasman, Abel, 425. 

Tasmania, 562. 

Tasso, 654. 

Telegraph, the, 441. 

Telephone, the, 442. 

Templars, the, order of, 252, 253, 
607. 

Temples, Greek, 194, 195; Roman, 
198. 

Tenochtitlan (t8n-och-tet-lan'), 
341. 

Teutonic languages, the, 320, 321. 
Teutonic peoples, the, 152. 

Thebes (thebz), in Egypt, 63. 
Thebes, in Greece, 103, 105, 119, 
120 . 

The-mis'to-cles, 113. 

The-o-do'si-us the Great, 214. 
The-o-phras'tus, 187, 188. 

Thermos, Roman, 199. 
Ther-mop'y-lae, battle of, 112. 




684 Index and Pronouncing Vocabulary 


Third Estate, the, 286, 287, 361- 
365. 

Thirteen Colonies, the, settlement 
of, 405, 406; transit of civiliza¬ 
tion from England to, 406-409; 
economic development of, 409- 
411; political development of, 
411-413; revolt of, 416-422. 

Thucydides (thu-sld'I-dez), 181, 
182. 

Tiber River, 133. 

Ti'gris River, 64. 

Toleration, religious, 636-638. 

Toleration Act, the, 637. 

Tory Party, the, 384. 

Tours (toor), battle of, 249. 

Townshend Acts, the, 417. 

Trade unionism, 453-455. 

Tra'jan, Roman emperor, 157, 178. 

Transportation, inventions in, 434- 
441. 

Trans-Andean Railway, the, 575, 
576. 

Trans-Siberian Railway, the, 549, 
550. 

Trent, Council of, 353. 

Trotsky, Leo, 527, 528, 529. 

Troubadours, the, 322. 

Troy, 99. 

“ Truce of God,” the, 269, 607. 

Tudor dynasty, the, 351, 378. 

Turkey, 257, 258, 523, 524, 533, 
547, 548, 600. 

Turks. See Ottoman Turks, 
Selj.uk Turks. 

Twelve Tables, the, 139, 140, 163, 
169. 

Two Sicilies, kingdom of the, 230. 

Tyre (tir), 74, 123. 

Tze-hsi (tse-she'), 553, 554. 

Union of South Africa, the, 545. 

Unitarians, the, 639. 

United Colonies of New England, 
the, 413. 

United States, the, formation of, 
422-424; expansion of, 581, 
582; Latin America and, 584- 
586; as a federation, 620-622. 


Universal Postal Union, the, 443, 
662. 

Universities, medieval, 301-305; 
modern, 636. 

Unlucky days, 312. 

“Usury” laws, 296. 

Utrecht (u'trfikt), Peace of, 370, 
414; Union of, 397. 

Vandals, the, 218, 220, 222, 274. 

Vedas (va'dds), the, 54, 58. 

Venetia, 503, 504, 505. 

Venice, 296, 297. 

Vergil, 183. 

Versailles (vSr-sa'y’), 366, 367. 

Versailles, Treaty of (1783), 420- 
422; (1919), 523, 618. 

Ve-sa'li-us, 645. 

Victor Emmanuel II, king of Italy, 
503, 504, 505. 

Victoria, Queen, 516 and note 1, 
518, 551. 

Vienna, Congress of, 489-491, 493, 
496, 508, 523, 524, 598, 624. 

Vikings (vi'kings), the, 226, note 1. 

Virginia, 405. 

Vis'i-goths, the, 218, 220, 222, 223, 
255. 

Vla-di-vos-tok', 549, 550. 

Volta, 646. 

Voltaire (vol-tar'), 388, 390, 391. 

Wagner (vag'ner), Richard, 657. 

Wales, 260. 

Warfare, ancient Oriental, 68; 
feudal, 238, 239, 253, 268, 269; 
modern, 593-597; the World 
War, 597-606; attitude of Chris¬ 
tianity toward, 606, 607; aboli¬ 
tion of, 618, 619. 

Washington, George, 419, 423, 448, 
571. 

Waterloo, battle of, 481, 482, 487. 

Watt, James, 432, 433. 

Week, the, 33, 34, 79 and note 1. 

West Indies, the, 579-581, 624. 

Wellington, Duke of, 482, 515. 

Whig Party, the, 384. 

Whitney, Eli, 432. 



Index and Pronouncing Vocabulary 685 


Wilberforce, William, 624. 

Willard, Miss Francis E., 628. 
William I, king of Prussia and 
German emperor, 509, 512, 595; 
II, 596. 

William III, king of England, 384, 
385, 413. 

William the Conqueror, 229, 260. 
William the Silent, 396. 

Williams, Roger, 638. 

Wilson, Woodrow, 612. 

Wireless telegraphy and telephony, 
442. 

Witchcraft, 312, 313, 407. 

Women, emancipation of, 630-633. 
“World Court/’ the, 616. 

World War, the, 597-606. 

Worms (vormz), Diet of, 349. 
Wright Brothers, the, 439. 


Writing, development of, 26-30; 
Cretan, 97. 

Wycliffe (wik'lif), John, 347. 
X-rays, the, 647. 

Xerxes (zurk'zez), Persian king, 
111, 112, 113. 

Yangtze (yang'tsS) River, 41, 42. 
Young Italy, 501, 504. 

Za'ma, battle of, 146. 

Ze'no, 187. 

Zeppelin (ts8p-e-len'), Count, 440. 
Zeus (zus), 101, 102. 

Zollverein (tsol'fer-in), the, 508. 
Zoroaster (zo-ro-&s'ter), 81. 
Zoroastrianism, 81, 249. 

Zwingli (tsving'le), 350. 















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